Good Drop Wine Cellars & Good Earth Wines

THE FACTS

Location: Vinchur Wine Park, Nashik
State: Maharashtra
Founded: 2009
Major shareholders: Ashwin Rodrigues
Total area: n/a
Area under vine: n/a
Production: 550,000 litres
Google map: click here

THE STORY

You may have a plan for the future, but life sometimes intervenes. This is exactly what happened with Ashwin Rodrigues, whose plan was to settle as a chartered accountant in Sydney. Then a holiday back home in India in 2006 threw him off course. Spotting an opportunity to invest in the Indian wine industry, he abandoned the projected career in finance and submerged himself instead in the international wine industry as an apprentice. He scrubbed barrels, washed tanks, pruned vines and made wine in the Barossa Valley, Australia, and in California, USA, before returning to India in 2009.

 

Good Drop Wine Cellars was established that same year, but the construction of the light-structure winery, with insulated walls to ward off the heat of inland Maharashtra, began only in 2012. Rodrigues chose Vinchur Wine Park because of the temptingly cheap plots provided by the Maharashtra state government. The inaugural vintage of Good Drop Wine Cellars’ own facilities was 2013, though wines custom crushed for this winery were on the market since 2010.

 

Good Drop Wine Cellars was, until the launch of Chandon, the only producer in India to focus singularly on sparkling wines. The strategy is to create technically sound, approachable, quality wines, which are value for money. Thus, an overwhelming 90 per cent approximately is made by carbonation and only a small amount of the total production is accounted for by tank-method wines.

 

All the grapes are sourced from Beed, Nashik, Solapur and Osmanabad in Maharashtra, with 50 per cent from contracted fruit and the rest bought in the open market. Some table grapes, Thompson Seedless, are used for the lower-end wines, but the rest are all Chenin, Sauvignon, Cabernet and Shiraz.

 

Rodrigues is clear in his business proposition: if you want India to become a wine-drinking country, you need to make wines accessible to a wide group of consumers and allow them to eventually move on to higher quality wines. With the swift transition of consumers to higher end wines, Casablanca was launched in 2014 to provide the intermediate step from the carbonated and fizzy to the classic-method sparkling wines. It is a semi-sweet tank-method sparkler made exclusively from Chenin Blanc grapes.

 

In 2015 Rodrigues announced the acquisition of Good Earth, the wine brand originally created by Girish Mhatre in Pune. This has allowed him to add a stable of well-reputed still-wine labels to his portfolio. Is it just a lucky coincidence that the names of both companies include the word ‘good’?

 

Good Drop Wine Cellars provides custom-crushing services in addition to wines under its own labels.


THE WINES

The sparkling wines come at three distinct quality levels. Fizzy wines at the sub-entry level include a white and a more alcoholic red, both sweet in style. The next level is the Italian collection, which includes three basic carbonated fizzy wines, again sweet in style. The top of the range is Casablanca, a hundred-per-cent Chenin Blanc made by the tank method. Though the fizzy carbonated ranges may not be my choice, Rodrigues should be commended for purposefully producing them within set technical parameters rather than opportunistically recycling old and out-of-date stock.

 

The Good Earth range was reputed for premium quality. The library vintages of 2009 and 2010, tasted at the end of 2014, started to show some unfavourable development of fruits drying out, quite possibly because of improper storage before Rodrigues acquired their remaining stocks with the brand. The 2014 vintage, however, had a great deal more potential thanks to Rodrigues’s winemaking skills. With good brand reputation and technical expertise, this is the opportunity for Good Earth to revive.


THE LABELS

Casablanca Vino Spumante: Chenin Blanc and Sauvignon Blanc, 15g/l residual sugar

Casablanca Rosé Sparkling Wine: Shiraz, 18g/l residual sugar

Frizzano Sparkling Wine: all made by charmat method; to be released in autumn 2015

  • extra dry: Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc, 12g/l residual sugar
  • semi dry: Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc, 35g/l residual sugar
  • rosé, semi dry: Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon, 35g/l residual sugar

Rio Fizzy Wine: lower alcohol (9%), residual sugar: 30 g/l

  • Bianco: Thompson Seedless and Sauvignon Blanc
  • Rosso: Bangalore Purple and Shiraz
  • Rosato: Bangalore Purple and Shiraz

Rio Strong Fizzy Port: higher alcohol (16%), 45g/l residual sugar


Good Earth

Concerto Collection

  • Brio: Shiraz
  • Basso: Cabernet Sauvignon

Raga Collection

  • Antaraa: Cabernet Sauvignon-Shiraz
  • Taal: Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Aarohl: Sauvignon Blanc

New Latitude Collection

  • Bleu: Shiraz-Cabernet Sauvignon
  • Bella: Shiraz rosé
  • Blanca: Sauvignon Blanc

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