Terroir - Wine Club

Terroir, a wine club in Chennai was officially launched with a grand ceremony followed by wine tasting and dinner on the 22nd of Jan 2009 at the Taj Coromandel.
The event was sponsored by the Taj Coromandel and Brindco, India’s largest importer of wine. Terroir will be an exclusive club of serious wine lovers with invited membership. People interested to join will have to pass through a selection process.
The club will be expanding its list of members shortly.

Capt Arjun Nair is the first president of Terroir, Mr Sudhir Rao is the Treasurer and Mr Sabu Balagopal is the Secretary. Mr Mukund Padmanabhan, journalist working at The Hindu, who also writes a fortnightly column on Wine in The Hindu Metro Plus is one of the founding members of Terroir. The website is www.terroir.in

Capt Arjun Nair and Taj Coromandel General Manager Mr Arindam Kunar unveiled the logo of the club and spoke on the occasion. Capt Arjun Nair briefly explained how the club was formed and Mr Arindam Kunar promised to price wine “aggressively” in the near future and also said that the “wine by glass” prices will be comparable to Coke and Mineral water. This is indeed very good news for wine lovers in Chennai as well as wine lovers in India. If other hotels follow this example, there will be a tremendous increase in the interest of wine and eventual sales of wine in the star hotels. Mr Arindam Kunar also informed the gathering that his hotel will be organising monthly wine events from Feb 2009 which will also be aggressively priced and Terroir members will be given further discount. They plan to bring in experts in the field to talk about wine and share their knowledge.

Mr Aman Dhall, Executive Director of Brindco India’s largest importer of wine was also present at the function. He spoke about his company and the position it enjoys in India’s wine imports. Mrs Reva Singh, Editor of Sommelier India who came all the way from Delhi to participate also spoke a few words about the wine clubs in the country and also distributed a few free copies of the latest edition of her magazine.

There were more than a 100 people who were invited for the Inauguration including the Terroir club members and their spouses, guests of Taj Coromandel, press people and other important Chennai personalities.

The highlight of the evening was the wine tasting. Wines were not served at the specially decorated dinner table, but at the country specific counters. It was more like a small wine fair with wines from 6 countries (both new and old world) - France, Italy, Australia, Chile, Spain and Portugal. There were about 32 different wines apart from the Italian Grappa and Portuguese Port. This would probably be the first time in India wherein a wine club was launched with such a grand tasting with so many different wines to choose from. France and Italy counters were the most popular among the participants.

I started with the French section as I found quite a few bottles of my favourite wine region Burgundy. An article in the chennai edition English newspaper reported that there were 12 grand cru wines in the French section which I feel is wrongly reported, I remember having seen only 1 Grand Cru in the Burgundy section which is the Echezeaux Grand Cru of Domaine du Clos Frantin and I am not sure if the Clos Frantin Gevrey Chambertin is a grand cru as I didn’t see the Grand Cru on its label and the other Grand Cru from Bordeaux - Saint Emilion First Grand Cru Classe B Chateau Belair , the rest were Premier Cru and AOC village appellation wines. So there were only 2 Grand Cru wines, one each from Burgundy and Bordeaux. Most of the wines were from 2000, 2001 and 2002 vintages.

The best among the Burgundy section was Pommard 1er Cru “Les Epenots” from Maison Louis Latour, Gevrey Chambertin from Maison Albert Bichot Domaine du Clos Frantin and Aloxe Corton 1er Cru “Clos des Marechaudes”. Echezeaux Grand Cru of Domaine du Clos Frantin was a disappointment, may be it was corked and was not stored properly. This is a problem with wines from Burgundy. It tastes best in Burgundy!

I would like to mention a short note about Burgundy wines. A winemaker in Burgundy once told me that Burgundy wines are very sensitive as it should not be subjected to frequent travel and bad storage and humidity is its main enemy. He narrated an incident which happened recently when he travelled to Australia for a wine fair to promote his wines and to his utter disbelief his wines tasted completely different when he served it to his guests and he had tears in his eyes and kept repeating to people that “this is not the wine I made”. A bottle of Burgundy opened in Chennai will taste different than the same bottle stored for a few days and opened in a hill station like Ooty for example! This happens to all fine wines and Burgundy in particular. Burgundy is not a “travel friendly wine” exclaimed a top official working for the Burgundy Chamber of Commerce whom I met at his Dijon office. There are people doing research to find different ways of storing Burgundy wines which retains the same structure and freshness in a Pinot Noir for example.

The Bordeaux wine Saint Emilion Chateau Belair 1er Grand Cru Classe B was another fine wine of the evening. Its one of the 13 Premier Grand Crus of Saint Emilion classification and belongs to the Class B (2 wines are in Class A and the rest 11 wines are in Class B).

The Italian section had good wines like Speri Amarone della Valpolicella Sant Urbano DOC and Castello Banfi Rosso di Montalcino DOC. I didn’t quite like the Chianti served – Chianti Classico Le Ellere DOCG. The Italian section had a Moscatello di Montalcino as the dessert wine and Grappa from the famous wine maker GAJA.

Australia’s Shiraz “ Weighbridge” Peter Lehmann , Chile Maipo valleys Reserva Cabernet Sauvignon Baron Philippe de Rothschild and Spain’s Tempranillo Rioja D.O from Bodegas Bilbainas Vina Pomal “ Crianza” were other interesting wines of the session.

Apart from helping others with the selection of wines and especially a few ladies who wanted to drink only the sweetest wine available, I must have been one of the few who made it a point to taste all the wines except the port, grappa and eventually had to rush to the empty dinner hall to grab a bite while the others were busy with their conversations.

After an interesting and extended “ Aperitif ” session of 32 different kinds of wines, the buffet had an equally interesting menu with quite a choice for a vegetarian like me. What was striking to note was most of the vegetarian main courses and accompaniments had a fruity touch – Strawberry risotto with glazed baby carrots and pinot noir reduction, exotic vegetable and fruit kebab with spicy cranberry and red currant jus , mausambi pulao, rosemary naan etc. May be the Chef wanted us to continue having a fruity flavour with the food as well and associate them with the fruity aromas which we experienced with the wines. We were also asked to order a glass of wine to accompany the food and I again selected a glass of Gevrey Chambertin to show my partiality towards Burgundy wines!

To finish the wine experience of the day I took a sip of the dessert wine from Italy Moscatello di Montalcino along with the desserts – Cappuccino mousse in brandy snap and the Rum and raisin white chocolate tart. Felt that the dessert wine was too sweet for that moment. A friend of mine seated next to me was a whisky lover ( he is not a wine lover but he happened to be there for the evening as his wife is a wine lover and member of Terroir ) and he ordered for a Grappa from Gaja Italy and didn’t quite like it as he thought it was too “synthetic” for his taste. Will have to ask Gaia Gaja to comment on his remark during her next trip. Incidentally Taj Coromandel had organised a wine dinner a few months back at their famous PREGO – Italian Fine dining restaurant with GAJA wines and Gaia Gaja was there to talk about her wines and we had also tasted her Grappa.

The list of all the wines were displaced on each dinner table and it was all sponsored by Brindco. The vintage years were not mentioned along with the name of the wine. The vintage is equally very important I feel to judge the quality of the wine even before tasting it and the terroir’s name for example must be mentioned first followed by the cru details and the wine negociants/brand names.

Participants were eager to know the name of the wine and the Taj staff standing behind the counters kept saying, “this wine is called Maison Albert Bichot” instead of saying “ Aloxe Corton” or “ Echezeaux”. I immediately tried to correct them but the Brand name or the name of the negociant, maison or domaine is prominently printed on the labels with a big font size and people do get confused. A lot of training needs to be done for the hotel staff working at restaurants in hotels all over India as most of the imported wine is consumed at these high end restaurants and they are the final contact with the client who knows very little about the wines and this training is equally important for the wine education and appreciation in India.

It was surely a grand launch for a wine club. A fellow member remarked that launches are easy but it has to succeed in the long run. I am sure the club will succeed! Another member’s wife felt a bit shy and exclaimed that she just came to know Merlot was a grape variety as she has been thinking it’s a name of a wine. I told her that she should be happy she has finally come to know and thanks to Terroir & Taj Coromandel.