1. York Sparkling Cuvée BrutJust a few months after this baby hit the market, it’s raked up rave reviews. The York Sparkling is made of one hundred per cent Chenin Blanc, a grape variety that the wine house has always worked well with (their still Chenin Blanc makes for a lovely glass as well). The nicest thing about this sparkling wine is that the owners – the Gurnani brothers – have retained a fair bit of fruit while still managing to make a dry sparkling wine. This will be the Brut to beat in the coming year. Cost: Rs 975 in Maharashtra 2. Zampa Soirée Brut RoséWhen it comes to a sparkling wine, there are two main things to look out for – the quality of the effervescence and the overall balance of the wine. This one scores high on both counts. The blush-coloured bubbly is made from the Syrah grape and has a refreshing palate of red cherry and hints of strawberry with a creamy mid-palate. Cost: Rs 1100 in Maharashtra 3. Charosa Selections Sauvignon BlancThis Nashik-based winery debuted their wines in 2013 and has had everyone floored since.

Among the whites, they produce an ace Viognier but it’s their Sauvignon Blanc that hits it out of the park. In fact, the Charosa Selections Sauvignon Blanc has outdone some well-reputed New Zealand and Australian wines in blind tastings. Cost: Rs 750 in Maharashtra 4. Fratelli Sangiovese BiancoPiero Masi, the well-known Tuscan winemaker, is the man largely behind the success of Fratelli’s wines. Their range is extensive but this one is by far the most peculiar. The Sangiovese Bianco is a white wine made from red grapes. As you can imagine, it’s not an awfully easy task. Because you’re left with a crisp and fresh white wine with the vigour and body of a red one and that, if done right, can be a winning combination. An unusual wine by all measures, Fratelli’s Sangiovese Bianco is a wine you either love or hate. It’s a rarity even by international standards. Cost: Rs 880 in Delhi 5. Krsma Sangiovese As a wine house – which would probably fit into the ‘boutique winery category’ – Krsma Estates in Hampi makes some of the best wines in the country.

Producing quality wine in India was a dream for Hyderabad-based owners Uma and Krishna Prasad Chigurupati (along with running a marathon in every continent for which they hold the Guinness World Record) which was realised in 2003. Among the wines they produce, their Sangiovese is particularly impressive with fulsome notes of dark chocolate, warm spices and nuts.wine best friend quotesAvailable only in Bangalorebest bottle wine and gifts 6. Charosa Reserve TempranilloTempranillo is likely to be the next big grape on Indian soil and this is probably why: It is most suited to hot climes and the people at Charosa have used this fact to their advantage. wine bar nyc menuTheir first vintage of the Reserve Tempranillo was so outstanding that it has inspired other wineries in the region to experiment with it.wine and beer making shops

Cost: Rs 1700 in Maharashtra 7. Zampa Chêne Grande ReserveChêne, meaning oak in French, is the new red blockbuster from the house of Grover-Zampa. It is a blend of Tempranillo and Syrah and aged for 15 months in oak making it more of a New World style exploit – decidedly dominant and unabashedly oaky. Long after the sip, one can still recollect the taste of toasted coffee on the palate. wine ice cream sold near meIt is a bold wine and, going by the international awards it has won so far, well-liked not just on home turf.good wine to have with cheese 8. Fratelli Sette (2011)Sette is the most premium among the reserve wines from the house of Fratelli. Sette, meaning seven in Italian, alludes to the men behind the winery. Three sets of brothers – the Mohite-Patils, the Sekhris and the Seccis – and the winemaker Piero Masi make for a total of seven.

The current vintage 2011 is a blend of Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon and is elegant and beautifully balanced. Cost: Rs 1800 in Delhi 9. Myra Reserve Shiraz This wine coming out of Nashik is perhaps the friendliest and most unassuming of the wines bearing the ‘Reserve’ label. It is also the most affordable of the lot but given how the word Reserve isn’t quite governed by any formal law yet, it remains open to interpretation. The Myra version shows notes of ripe red fruit with generous amounts of vanilla from the oak, making for an elegant wine that is quite approachable. Cost: Rs 800 in Maharashtra 10. Sula Dindori Reserve Shiraz Dindori by Sula was the first wine to use the name of a region on its label, so in a way it was almost like a single-vineyard wine. For what it’s worth, it made the region of Dindori famous and other winemakers soon sprouted up around. For years, Sula’s Dindori held fort as everyone’s go-to red wine. This wine shows deep fruit extraction followed by ageing and finishing in expensive oak.

It was recently adjudged #25 in the top 100 wines of 2014 by Wine Enthusiast magazine and that is definitely a commendation worth celebrating. Cost: Rs 890 in Delhi7 Best Indian Wines You Must TryAnoothi Vishal   |  Updated: June 23, 2016 15:46 ISTTweeterfacebookGoogle Plus RedditRelated VideosNapa, a wine countryAditya goes down the memory lane in SanawarRhone wine region9 Legitimately Good Kosher Wines for Passover 7 High-End Proseccos to Try Now Why Rosé Is the Perfect Wine for Easter Oscars 2017: What to Drink While You Binge-Watch the Best Picture Nominees 5 Wines Under $15 to Pair with Easter Ham You Don't Have to Drink Pink on Valentine's Day Are Some Wines More Romantic Than Others? What to Drink for Super Bowl 50 What Does a $300 Bottle of Chinese Wine Taste Like? Pairing wine with Indian food is simple, right? A lightly sweet Riesling, a spicy curry, end of story. Or maybe that's just part of the story... Nine times out of ten if you ask a sommelier what wine goes with Indian food, the answer will be an off-dry white.

It's not a bad answer—if you're talking about a spicy curry, for example. But Indian cuisine, like Chinese cuisine, is about as far from homogenous as you can get. Kashmiri cooking is different from Keralan cooking, both are different from what you might find in Kolkata in Bengal, and so it goes. So saying that a lightly sweet Gewurztraminer is ideal with Indian food is about as nonsensical as saying, "Chardonnay goes great with American food." At the acclaimed restaurant Babu Ji in New York's East Village (where I had the best Indian meal I've had in ages), chef Jessi Singh and wine consultant Jorge de Yarza (who has his own superb Basque place, Donostia, a few blocks away) have thought a lot about this. As Singh says, "I try to feature the whole of India on my menu. One dish from the west, a couple from the south, a couple from the north, a few from the east." Singh's Gol Gappa, a hollow, crackling-crisp ball of poori bread, filled with tamarind chutney, yogurt and spices is indicative of his cooking.

Eating it—you pop it in your mouth in one bite—is like having a flavor-piñata explode on your tongue. "If you want to give someone a crash course in Indian cuisine, you give them this," Singh says. "It's a street snack, and comes from Upper Pradesh. Whenever anyone in my family dies we take their ashes to this one town in Upper Pradesh. The priests keep a ledger of the family—our ledger goes back 800 years. This town's tradition is to make their gol gappa with yogurt. It's so nice—creamy, crunchy, sweet, spicy, sour." This is a dish that a lightly sweet wine actually works with. De Yarza says, "With the gol gappa you get that citrusy, minty, yogurt, sweet-spice mix. The Theo Minges Kabinett Riesling that we have on the list almost tastes like a deconstructed margarita. It's a fun combo with those snack food flavors." Singh's Punjabi Kadhi, a dish of cauliflower fritters in a tangy, turmeric-inflected yogurt curry, has an entirely different flavor profile. "Kadhi is a staple dish of my home.

We had ten buffalos, so we'd make our own yogurt, and my mom would take the yogurt and keep it three or four days to let it get more sour. You add some lemon juice, add turmeric and chickpea flour, and cook it for seven or eight hours." For the Kadhi, Yarza pours a Chardonnay from France's Jura region. "The kadhi has a beautiful sourness, so it needs more weight," he says. "A structured, savory white is ideal." Singh enjoys the way his menu darts all over the Indian subcontinent: "I love Chinese-Indian cuisine—Chinese refugees in Calcutta created it over 100 years ago. I always have two or three things that represent that tradition, like Chinese noodles with Indian spice, or Mumbai spring rolls, with green mango, carrots and shredded meat. The prawn coconut curry on our menu is mostly Keralan; it's very simple, with no other spice than fresh curry leaves, which don't overwhelm the flavor of the prawns. The yogurt kebab we do, that's from Lucknau: Awadhi cuisine, the cuisine of the Moghul rulers of that region.

They were into poetry and food and architecture and music; they used to feed their goats gold leaf thinking that it would make the goats taste like gold. It's a very flavorful, rich, creamy cuisine. Our beef curry is southern Indian, bay leaves, pepper, cardamom—that's a spicy curry." (De Yarza pairs it with a California Grenache from Beckmen Cellars.) "The Moghuls ruled India for nearly a thousand years," Singh continues. "They brought hung yogurt, and beets; dried seeds and nuts. But you've also got the influence of the French in Pondicherry, the Portuguese in Goa—vindaloo, which classically is pork cooked in vinegar and spices—comes from the Portuguese influence. Farsi refugees in Mumbai and Delhi; the Sri Lankan influence; and the spice route influence, Thailand. Every 200 or 300 years our food has been influenced by some culture. And they leave their marks on it." So, saying that one wine can go with all that does seem a bit like lunacy. But if you absolutely had to pick one?