| Delhi Experiences Antinori Magic | | | | By: Sourish Bhattacharyya |  Page 1 of 3 next >> |
By Sourish Bhattacharyya
Whenever Alessia Antinori, the eldest of the three daughters of Italy’s wine mogul, Piero Antinori, lands in India, she gets the feeling that she’s going to return. It’s the feeling you get when you drink her family’s anthemic wines. You know that you are going to ask for more. “I fell in love with this country when I first came here ten years back,” Alessia, 31, told www.indianwineacademy.com. “It is emerging as an important market for wine, but I don’t come here only to do business,” said the charming woman who has experienced India from Ladakh to Varanasi, to the Andamans in the Bay of Bengal.
Representing the 26th generation of the wine-making family that traces its roots back to 1385 (as Sanjay Menon of Sonarys, the Indian importer of Antinori wines, was to say on another occasion, “It is very hard to find a family that can trace its history so far back in time”), Alessia began her fifth visit to India – the first to be devoted only to business – with a presentation of the Peppoli Chianti Classico DOCG 2003 at a tasting of 12 top Italian wines organised by the Istituto del Vino Italiano di Qualita Grandi Marchi.
Alessia was sharing the spotlight with representatives of 11 other family-owned Italian wine superbrands and she spoke with passion of her family’s “obsession with quality.” There have been occasions, she said, when her father had held back certain wines just because the vintage wasn’t right. It happened as recently as 2002, which was a horrible year for the industry in Italy.
As she introduced the Peppoli – a 90% Sangiovese with Merlot and Syrah, full of velvety tannins, and a heavenly match for a gently spiced mutton seekh kebab or a butter chicken – she made a significant point. It is important for a wine company to be family-owned, to resist the pressure to sell out to big bucks, Alessia pointed out, because “it’s the only way to transmit passion and quality from generation to generation.” Making wine, as she kept reminding us, was all about passion and it showed in the Peppoli.
But it was only the teaser. A couple of days after the Grandi Marchi tasting, Sanjay and Alessia, along with the Hyatt Regency Delhi, had conjured up a memorable treat for the members of the Delhi Wine Club. The evening was planned in such a way that Alessia could guide us literally up the Antinori value chain, beginning with a Franciacorta, the sparkling wine from North-West Italy that many regard as Champagne’s most serious challenger yet. Alessia has been working on this sparkling wine ever since her father acquired the estate some time back (she insists she’s first and foremost an oenologist, although she’s heading the exports division).
When the Franciacorta, a delicious symphony of Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc and Pinot Noir created by Alessia with evident affection, was being served, Sanjay, who made a fashion statement with his immaculate Jodhpuris (his wife Sonali, who has grown up in Mumbai, is from Jodhpur), asked the guests to repeat the word ‘Champagne’ aloud three times. He followed it up with ‘Franciacorta’ and then asked the question: “Tell me, which has more libido?” The sparkler certainly did.
Speaking that evening, Delhi Wine Club (and Indian Wine Academy) President, Subhash Arora, said he had not seen the word ‘beautiful’ being used to describe a wine. “Seeing Alessia and drinking her sparkling wine,” he said, “I’m sure we can introduce it in our wine vocabulary.” As the evening progressed, a member of the club declared, “Alessia, your name should have been Delicia.”
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