The Hindu Business Line : Care for the wine menu?

Soak yourself in wine, splash it on your visage, use it in cooking or for sheer gastronomic pleasure... there's no escaping its mind-boggling versatility.

Vine, vinum, wien, booze, mei, sekt, cava, grappa, asti, madeira, sherab, sake... call it what you will but there's no denying the spirited role that wine has come to play in our lives today.

Walk into the whirligig of a fashion show, the studied sombreness of an art exhibition or the erudite ambience of a book launch and you'll spot the causeratti flaunting wine-filled flutes. Visit a spiffy eatery and a wine menu will unobtrusively find its way to your table. Entertaining at home? There's no way you can get by without uncorking a Chardonnay, Beaujolais, Bordeaux...

"Wine is no longer considered a luxury beverage," says Rajesh Batla, wine expert and sommelier at Noida's The Radisson MBD Hotel. "With people exposed to travel, good living and fine food, drinking wine has become de rigueur. Wine enhances the flavour of cuisines ranging from the traditional to the most sophisticated, and has become a metaphor for gastronomic maturity."

Perhaps that's why an average bottle of wine — white or red — can be had for about Rs 600, but the prohibitive ones (Cabernet Sauvignon, Mouton Cadet Blanc, Chateau Armailhac or Grand Grand Du Classe de Paudillac) may mop up your entire month's salary. And though, for economic reasons, restaurants may sell wines at `per glass' (usually between Rs 70-100) cost, they demand five times the market price for a bottle. This is because diners often return wines that have gone foul (and there's no way of knowing this without uncorking it), without bearing its expense.

But, prohibitively priced or not, wine's appeal is universal. And its history entwined with many global cultures.

In Iran, mei (the Persian wine) has been a central theme for poetry for more than a thousand years.

The earliest known evidence of a fermented, wine-like drink comes from the Chinese village of Jiahu around 7000 BC. Here, millet or rice wine was discovered by chemically analysing traces from buried jars containing rice, beeswax, hawthorn fruit and wild grape! Wine played a stellar role in ancient Egypt too, evident from winemaking scenes encrypted on the walls of tombs. However, it was left to the Greeks to take to viniculture with gusto and popularise winemaking across Europe.

"As an agricultural product," explains Aman Dhall, Executive Director, Brindco Enterprises, which imports 350 wine labels from nine countries, "wine reflects the variety of the land, the local yeast cultures and the climatic conditions under which grapes are grown. Geology also determines a wine's taste as the soil's minerals imbue it with their own unique flavour."

As a result, wines are classified by the year of the grape harvest (vintage). Wine may even be classified by vinification methods and slotted as sparkling, still, fortified, rosa or blush.

"Wine's colour, however," explains wine connoisseur and columnist Magandeep Singh, "is not determined by the grape's hue — as is commonly believed — but rather by the presence or absence of the grape skin during fermentation!"

With so many parameters for wine quality, the wine trade is crucial for many countries. In fact, France's economy would crash were it not such a prolific wine producer. Of course, excellent South African, Australian and Kiwi wines are today giving the French competition in the wine sweepstakes.

Indian wines like Sula and Indage too, are getting there. Decanter — the world's number one wine magazine — recently named `La Reserve', the premium wine from one of India's largest vintners, Grover Wines, as the best New World Red Wine in the world.

An integral part of the wine business is the wine tours, especially across Europe. Tourists can stomp through the picturesque Austrian, Dutch and French countryside (Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne), sipping and savouring wines at local taverns with scrumptious cheeses.

The Austrian vineyards or heurigers in Neiderosterreich (or lower Austria) do a roaring business in wine tours. This area traces its roots to Celtic times and the Romans grew hundreds of grape varieties in the valley's mild climate and loess soil.

Teeming with antioxidants such as polyphenols and resveratrol, wine is heart-friendly too. It is also anti-ageing. Wine facials are quite the in thing these days! Red-wine facial lotions and pomegranate-wine body polish too, sell briskly while vinotherapy treatments — baths enhanced with grape extracts — are the next big thing in spas.

In other words, soak yourself in wine, splash it on your visage, use it in cooking, as medicine, therapy or for sheer gastronomic pleasure... there's no escaping the beverage's mind-boggling versatility. How about drinking to that? Cheers!

Tipsy tips

If you enjoy wine, it's time to brush up on wine etiquette too:

Temperature: The texture and chemistry of wine is so complex that it changes dramatically with temperature. Hence, while the right temperature can heighten subtle tastes and camouflage defects, the wrong one can ruin its taste. Different wines need different temperature — while sparkling is best served at between six to eight degrees Celsius, white is great at 15 degrees Celsius. For red wine, the ideal temperature is 15-20 degrees Celsius while sherry is best quaffed at 20 degrees Celsius.

Decant: Some wines need regular decanting — for instance, port and vintage red wines. Pour the wine slowly into a decanter till the sediments separate from the clear liquid. Don't drink immediately. Let the decanted wine `rest' for an hour at room temperature. This way it will taste better rather than if it is poured straight into a glass.

Serving: How a wine is poured depends upon whether it is bubbly or devoid of bubbles.

While a sparkling wine is poured along the side of the glass to contain its bubbles, a non-sparkler can go straight into the centre of the glass so that the bouquet may permeate the glass and fill it with its aroma.

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