ABOUT US
My experience with wines began more than a decade back, with a realization that a country like ours, with a potential to grow good wine grapes and make wines on par with any wine making countries is lagging far behind in this field. And there are Cardiac related mishaps, which a wine drinking country rarely encounters. The wines available at that time are practically decimal and that was the time when some of the progressive people started wineries and making Indian Wines.
With lack of many wines, I started experimenting with many fruits, to understand the basic profiles of wines. One of the reason being I was in touch with Mr. Jack Keller of Pleasenton, a leading authority of making fruit wines. (Twice President, San Antonio Regional Wine Guild, Certified Home wine Judge, Frequent contributor to “Wine Maker’ magazine, Creator and Author of ‘The Wine Making Home Page’). He guided me through the total understanding of wine chemistry, characteristics, basic and advances in wine making process.
Slowly my interest extended to the grape wines. This interest in grape wines leads me to form the Hyderabad Wine Club. The purpose was to gather like minded people to come together to learn and experience wine. One of the reasons being to emphasize that wine is healthier than consumption of hard liquors, alcoholic mixes or beer. Wine is the main reason why people of the Mediterranean Sea are healthier than their northern cousins despite their poor nutritional habits. Like consumption of plenty of olive oil & other animal fats and even, smoking heavily.
The availability of wine, at that time, was pathetic in Hyderabad. In my search about wines, I got in touch with Mr. Remie Law of Happy Vines in Singapore (Twice Wine Judge to the ‘Singapore Wine Challenge’, Creator of first International e-wine portal, Twice Panel of Jurors at “The Concorso Encologico Internazionale, VinItaly). This resulted in a visit to Malaysia and Singapore. It opened my eyes on the vast variety of wine that was actually overwhelming for a novice. We had many opportunities to meet with wine experts, understanding the growth of wine culture in Asia, new findings in Wine and Asian food pairings. It helped me to improve my wine knowledge under able guidance.
It is at the same time I was in touch with Robin Garr, of “Wine Lovers Page’ and Esteban Ramos, Wine Judge for Union Espanola de Catadores (Spain). Together with Jack Keller, these wine specialists are always ready to educate me, answer my wine queries, in spite of their busy schedules.
With this encouragement, I never looked back. We had many wine tastings, wine dinners with Hyderabad Wine Club to impart wine knowledge of Hyderabad Wine enthusiasts, where I took lead in imparting wine knowledge to fellow wine lovers.
My trips to Europe, USA were revealing. We had opportunity of visiting some of the wineries in Spain, Portugal and USA. The visit to Hyderabad by our European friend, loaded with over 12 bottles of wine in their luggage was probably the ultimate in understanding the diversity of wines. Remie Law too visited at the same time and he led us through the various wines. I started falling in love with wines. Wine became a passion for me absorbing any wine related information. Wine knowledge knows no boundaries and it is an interesting fact for a mechanical engineer with specialization in turbines.
I am very much interested in developing wine culture, and I would like to share my own journey in attaining wine knowledge. Wine is both for enjoyment AND health.
I hope, as more wines are being allowed into Hyderabad, more people will take the opportunity to learn more. The best start is a membership with Hyderabad Wine Club. With sufficient synergies, the Club will be able to invite wine specialists to share at our wine events, thus, improving our knowledge about wine and enjoying it along the way. Hyderabad Wine Club will also be able to organize trips to wine shows both in India and the region. Later to Europe and beyond, if we have the right number of enthusiasts.
We feel that all the Wine Makers in India should first think of developing wine culture, lobby with the authorities to reduce taxes on wines, impress upon them that wine is a food drink. Even though Hyderabad Wine Club is not for promoting any brand, we are ready to share the common goal of developing wine culture, so that wine lovers will slowly realize the benefits in shifting to this healthy drink.
There are simply too many wines in this world for a person to be an expert in all of them. I do conduct Wine Appreciation sessions and luckily, I have had more experience with wine than most, if not all, of the participants.
Balaji Rao BK, President Hyderabad Wine Club