Fratelli Wines
THE FACTS
THE STORY
Since the first harvest in 2010, Fratelli Wines has grown its production dynamically and expanded its distribution network widely to become the second biggest producer in India. Italian for ‘brothers’, the name Fratelli was chosen because three pairs of brothers – one from Italy, the other two Indian – set up the business together.
The phenomenal growth was initially driven by the late Kapil Sekhri, who was the managing director and one of the public faces of Fratelli Wines until his untimely death, aged just 45 years, in 2020. Though relatively young, he was a seasoned businessman with no illusions about the immense challenge of the undertaking: to prove in the first ten years of inception that Indian wines could be just as good as the imported, and then to take them to new heights. With every sip of a glass of Fratelli today it is clear that the vision of the late Kapil Sekhri – who was a gentleman of calm demeanour, sharp mind and impeccable conduct – has been realised insofar as achieving a quality equivalent to that of imported wines ever since the first vineyards were planted in 2006.
Fate has, however, entrusted the scaling of new heights to a reshuffled team, which includes Pooja and Aditya Sekhri, the widow and son of the late Kapil. His brother Gaurav has also taken on a more visible role in the business. Piero Masi, the Tuscan master winemaker who was responsible for all viticultural and winemaking operations since the selection of the vineyard site in 2006, died in the spring of 2022, and was succeeded by his son Giovanni.
The elder Masi, with a brief to make an outstanding product, directed the work that transformed the Maharashtra countryside into orderly vineyards. He was accustomed to working with soils of low fertility. It was fortunate that Akluj had swathes of agricultural land with the right soils and that the Mohite-Patil family had the right local knowledge to ease land acquisition. The barren hills and grazing fields were broken up, some 350,000 young vines, imported from France and Italy, were planted, and a winery with a 600,000-litre capacity and an underground ageing cellar was constructed. The well-trained, enthusiastic young team that was recruited was given ample responsibility and development opportunities to remain motivated. The underlying motto was, and remains, to work with passion, not under pressure.
Passion has been driving growth at a rapid pace, so the original winery had to be significantly enlarged to accommodate the ever-increasing number of tanks and barrels and demand for storage. This was to be expected as grape is processed from both the 240-acre estate of the winery and a network of contract growers covering another 260 acres in the vicinity of Akluj.
The focus is unapologetically on the Italian pedigree. Fratelli Wines was the first to make, under the Sette label, an Indian equivalent of a Super Tuscan wine; released the first Sangiovese Bianco, a white wine made from black grapes; produces rosé from Sangiovese rather than Shiraz or Cabernet; and was the first to make a truly premium quality dessert wine in a style reminiscent of Chianti’s Vin Santo.
One of Giovanni Masi’s first experiments once he took over the winemaking baton from his father was the creation of a true Vin Santo from Chenin Blanc in 2023. Nobody knows what it tastes like, because, as he explains, ageing the wine is his task, but selling it will be the job for the next generation in 20 to 40 years’ time.
The original plan was to produce wines only from estate-grown fruit, but market conditions demanded that the most basic ranges, providing Fratelli’s bread and butter, be supplied tax efficiently in local markets. To this end, it leases wineries in Karnataka – earlier Nectar Winery and now Hampi Heritage Winery.
Business-savvy solutions characterise the expansion and transformation of the Fratelli portfolio, whether it is about the launch of premium products, refreshing the brand’s look and feel, or introducing wine in a can to Indian consumers. Fratelli Wines launched premium products, such as the Gran Cuvée Brut, a premium bottle-fermented sparkling; the MS range; J’noon, the Bordeaux-styled pair of white and red wines; and JCB N°47, the bottle-fermented sparkling Chardonnay, honouring the year in which India gained her independence. Tilt offers an approachable choice of styles in can, and the new Fratelli labels are vibrant with colour and people celebrating life – projecting a sense of la dolce vita.
THE ESTATE
The 240 acres are spread across three sites in Motewadi, Garwad and Nimgaon in the Solapur district of Maharashtra, approximately 170 kilometres from Pune. Once past Akluj, small villages set amongst endless sugar-cane plantations signal the approach of the winery building, its futuristic flying-saucer shape impossible to miss. Doubled in size between 2018 and 2020, the winery nestles neatly within the rolling hills. Four kilometres farther on the magnificent beauty of Fratelli’s wine country opens up. The visitor may expect to be treated to an off-road jeep experience to inspect the various blocks of vines. A constant breeze swirls about the summit of the highest hill in the vineyards, where a tasting and viewing platform was added in 2023 to offer, amongst other things, a perfect site to enjoy brunch or watch the sun set with a glass of Fratelli.
With the exception of some bush-trained Syrah on a rocky hillside, the vines are all cordon trellised and VSP trained. The original blocks boast 11 different varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Sangiovese, Syrah, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Marselan, Müller-Thurgau, Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. Fratelli quickly learnt that Pinot Noir is a nearly impossible variety in Maharashtra’s subtropical climate, and has uprooted its vines. A replantation programme commenced in 2023, focusing on the introduction of new clones of Sangiovese, Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Zinfandel. Wine aficionados may wonder why a barely 20-year-old vineyard was in need of replantation, but remember that vines enjoy no dormancy in subtropical climate; they live life in the super-fast lane of the expressway. As the soils are sandy, clay and loamy, a variety of rootstocks, suited to soils of low fertility, was selected, including SO4, Gravesac, 5BB and M0R. The 2023 replantation programme provided an opportunity to experiment with new rootstocks, including drought-resistant 110R as well as [Ger / K5UB]. All the plants are imported as grafted to manage the quarantine time requirement efficiently. The approach of Masi Junior is clearly detectable: the focus is on successfully tackling the challenges of climate change, achieving ideal phenolic maturity, balancing the water-stress level and compensating for the lack of dormancy.
The workers who tend to the vineyards are primarily concerned with keeping mildew under control and smoothing the cycle between dry and wet seasons. Traditionally, there was comparatively less danger from rot and fungal disease in this drier area, but the pre-monsoon period is becoming cloudier and wetter, and with occasional rains lingering, the monsoon peters out more slowly. Beetles typically appear in September and October, and birds have to be kept away when the fruit is ripening in the winter and early spring. The vineyard has a reservoir to store water, facilitating deficit irrigation. Giovanni Masi’s focus on smoothing the cycle between the seasons aims to reduce the pre-harvest water stress for vines, so that they achieve better phenolic maturity. The pre-monsoon pruning in March and April also helps smooth the cycle. The soil’s fertility is adjusted organically with a mix of cow dung and urine as well as plant material.
A network of contract suppliers has been created in the Akluj area to secure the growing demand for grapes. With an additional 220 acres, the quality of the fruit delivered by local farmers is of paramount importance, and is ensured through a combination of working with long-term contracts, providing viticultural knowledge, deploying an army of vineyard workers for green-harvest, and channelling the harvested fruit from low- and high-yielding farms into different product ranges. Higher prices compensate farmers who deliver higher quality fruit but in lower quantities. This collaboration between the winery and the growers has created a class of ‘Fratelli farmers’.
The start of picking has been brought forward from late January to late December and early January, allowing the grapes to retain more of the acids which help counter unwelcome bacterial activity during winemaking. The grapes are processed in a modern and well-equipped winery, home to an army of stainless-steel tanks, all imported from Italy. Most of the wines are made in a fruity, fresh and approachable style. The bottles have screw caps and the wines are sold within a year of production. Those destined for premium labels undergo ageing typically in French oak barrels, mostly Saury and Radoux, before blending and bottling, but some American and Hungarian barrels are used as well. However, even these wines spend a period of approximately two months in stainless-steel tanks before maturation in the barrel, as Giovanni Masi prefers to put the wine as clean as possible in the barrel, with ‘cleanliness’ understood here as the near perfect settling of fine impurities, which, if present during ageing, could likely contribute to the development of wilder, unwelcome flavours.
Masi Junior continues the travel pattern of his late father. He is in Akluj for at least a fortnight half a dozen times a year to personally inspect and participate in the major processes. It has in fact become the new tradition that he and Ale Secci taste the grapes together before harvest as well as the new wines during blending. It is under the dedicated and energetic guidance of both new and older generations of the brotherhood that Indian wines of Italian character are being crafted in southern Maharashtra.
THE WINES
There is a wide array of quality levels, from the sub-entry-level sweet Indian port to basic dry and fruity varietal wines and premium barrel-aged whites and reds. With regard to styles, Fratelli offers a full range: whites, rosé, reds, sparkling and dessert. In addition, there is the choice between unwooded and barrel-aged wines.
Sette is firmly established as the original premium label in the Fratelli portfolio. The stylistic development of this Super Tuscan-styled red wine is intriguing. The initial vintages seemed to change a bit from year to year with a shift in the proportions of Cabernet and Sangiovese. The use of other varieties, typically Cabernet Franc and Merlot, showed variation too. Then, in 2012, one of the pre-bottling blends – not the final one, though – was made of all seven (sette) red varieties of the estate, true to its name. Eventually, however, Sette seems to have settled on being a Sangiovese-dominated blend with Cabernet Sauvignon as the partner.
J’noon, which is Urdu for ‘passion’, is the name given to the super-premium white and red wines produced in collaboration with renowned Burgundy vintner Jean-Charles Boisset. They were launched in 2018. The white is a blend of barrel-fermented Chardonnay and stainless-steel-fermented Sauvignon, which undergoes an additional year of barrel ageing, resulting in a full-bodied and generous white wine. The red, made from blending Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, is equally full-bodied. It is the combination of American and Hungarian oaks that softens its character with sweeter spices.
Noi is an easy, light and fun sparkling wine that was added to the Fratelli stable of labels in 2017. Surprisingly, it is made of Thompson Seedless, a table grape. The rosé version gets its colour from the addition of early-picked Syrah. The base wines are made in stainless steel to preserve the fresh fruit flavours. They then go through bottle fermentation which creates the bubbles. After two to three months of bottle ageing, the residual sugar is adjusted to around 25 g/l, making the final product approachable for the novice palate.
The Gran Cuvée Brut is a classic sparkling wine with secondary fermentation in the bottle, resulting in doughy, biscotti and yeast tones. It is labelled and sold as non-vintage, but in fact most of the base wine comes from a single vintage. Yet, there tends to be a remarkable consistency of house style across the vintages.
JCB No°47 is a brut blanc de blancs made from hundred per cent Chardonnay. This traditional-method sparkling wine gains its richness from 24 months of ageing on lees before disgorgement. Its name refers to the collaboration with Jean-Charles Boisset and pays homage to India’s independence, gained in 1947.
Santo is a premium quality, gold-coloured dessert wine made from Chenin Blanc, picked two months after normal harvest time. The shrivelled berries concentrate the flavours and increase the sugar content, while the acids are retained to ensure freshness.
THE LABELS
Sidus: sub-entry-level, sweet, Indian port-style wine
Vero: a simple red made of Cabernet Sauvignon
Tilt: a range of easy-drinking wines
packed in can
- White
- Red
- Bubbly
- Bubbly rosé
- Noi spritzer
Ziva: white and red
Noi: made from Thompson Seedless,
a bottle-fermented sparkling wine; semi-dry in style
- White
- Rosé
Fratelli Classic: Chenin, Shiraz, Merlot
Fratelli varietal range: some oaked;
either staves or partially matured in barrel
- Sangiovese Bianco
- Sauvignon Blanc
- Chenin Blanc
- Chardonnay
- Shiraz rosé
- Sangiovese
- Merlot
- Shiraz
- Cabernet Franc and Shiraz blend
- Cabernet Sauvignon
MS: created by the late Piero Masi
and the late Steven Spurrier, the initials stand for ‘master selection’ just as
much as ‘Masi and Spurrier’
- White: Chardonnay dominated with circa 10% Sauvignon Blanc
- Rosé: from Sangiovese
- Red: a blend of Sangiovese, Cabernet Franc and Syrah
Sette: a premium blend of reds with
extended barrel ageing
J’noon: barrel fermented and aged
blended white and red wines, made in collaboration with Burgundian Jean-Charles
Boisset
- White: Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc blend
- Red: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot, aged in lightly toasted American and Hungarian oak barrels
Gran Cuvée Brut: 100% Chenin Blanc-based,
classic-method sparkling wine
JCB N°47: 100% Chardonnay,
traditional-method sparkling wine in brut style
Santo: premium dessert wine made
exclusively from late-harvest Chenin Blanc; minuscule quantities of 2,000
bottles per vintage
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