Bettering with age

Sula Wines will soon complete ten years and on the anvil are plans to set up five-six wine bars by 2010 and a boutique restaurant by 2012. CEO Rajeev Samant looks back on the journey:

Uncorking the idea
It has been an absolutely fabulous journey. The initial years were very tough; in fact it is a real wonder that we made it so far.

We started farming grapes in 1997 and in 1999 we sold our first wine. In 2000, we were able to sell 50,000 bottles of Sauvignon Blanc.

Sula today is a household name and all the efforts have been worth the while. This year the sales have gone up to three-and-a-half million bottles, so you can see how far we've reached.



Let it flow
My affair with wine started when I was in California for seven years. When I came back home, I went to our Nasik property.

It was just a huge expanse of grass. Nasik, as you know, is a grape region, and so I decided to cultivate grapes and build a vineyard there. But the need was more philosophical than anything else.

Tingling taste buds
I must have tasted around 1,000 wines by now! When I travel to the wine fairs around the world, I taste 50 wines a day.
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But there are only three-four wine tastes that I remember explicitly. Show me the label and I'll immediately recollect having enjoyed it.
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But to me, it's not a memory game. The best wine experience I've had till now was around five years ago at Chateau Haut Brion in Bordeaux. That red wine was just divine.

Beyond spirits
I'm very passionate about food and consider myself a gourmet cook. I've an organic farm setup in Nashik where I grow asparagus, rockets, and broccoli and so on. Tokyo is my favourite destination for experiencing food culture.

Besides travelling, I'm equally passionate about my fitness regime. My idea of unwinding is a treadmill session or a workout.

A glass of wine and a good book or the Economist helps me relax. But I'm also a very social person and go out typically thrice a week or I just take myself off to Goa and spend time on the beach.