In 1988, Amod Chopra, a Berkeley, Calif., importer of groceries and beer from India,
decided to try bringing in wine from the subcontinent, a sparkler under the Omar Khayyam
label. It took him 12 years to unload that one container on the broad-minded, wine-loving
Bay Area. Now he's betting on a different horse, Sula Vineyards, India's first entry into
international-grade winemaking—and his client list now includes some of the snazziest
white-tablecloth restaurants in Northern California.
Sula is the brainchild of an Indian-born, Stanford-educated Silicon Valley escapee, Rajeev Samant.
He's hardly unique in moving from high tech to fine wine; the twist is doing it in South Asia, not
Sonoma. Sula is reshaping Indian wine law and nurturing a fledgling wine culture; it's another
globalization story, with a great cast of characters.
In college, Samant says, "We'd drink anything but vvine. It wasn't until I graduated and worked for
Oracle that I got interested. It was mainly hecause of a girlfriend at the time, a Califomia gal.
She introduced me to wine." After developing a keen interest in drinking the stuff, he "up and quit
one day and decided I wanted to do something back there"—with no intention of going into the wine
business.
Salmant's father is a prominent businessman in Mumbai (Bombay), but Rajeev wanted something in the
countryside. He took over 30 family-owned acres
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in Nashik, an agricultural area 120 miles northeast of Mumbai in Maharashtra state, and
started growing mangoes. He added table grapes, a Nashik specialty, and exported them to the U.K. Soon
he realized, "This is going to be boring, I'm not into table fruit. I'm a very social guy." ln 1995,
he started planting vineyards instead.
Which raised several daunting issues, starting with whether it was possible to grow quality winegrapes
in India. The small domestic wine industry relied primarily on table varieties. When Samant retained
Kerry Damskey, an experienced North Coast winemaker and consultant with Terroirs in Geyserville,
Sonoma County, Damskey had his doubts ahout tropical grapegrowing.
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On a high, 1,700-foot plateau, Nashik has what Damskey calls "a very Mediterranean climate, with
almost no humidity and cool nights"—but only for six months of the year. Sula grows its grapes from
late September (after the monsoons have ended) through March (before the really hot weather hits).
Temperatures in December and January are in the high 70s, with nights in the 40s; it gets warmer as
harvest approaches. In a rain shadow, Nashik receives only a quarter of the rain Mumbai gets, and
none of it falls during the grapegrowing months. Since the climate lacks a true dormant season,
Damskey forces a "quiet time" on the vines with two rounds of pruning: once in May after harvest,
and again
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