Redwing Wines
THE FACTS
THE STORY
THE WINES
VIDEO GALLERY
An unlikely dirt track turns off the road en route to Nashik from the Dindori sub-region, and leads to Redwing Wines. Large fonts in pink herald the name of the winery on its buildings’ fading yellow paint. Potted plants, sadly reminiscent of their cousins from my primary-school days in socialist, mid-1980s’ Hungary, sit on the balcony wall. As I approach I surmise that Redwing has seen happier days.
In the freshly cleaned vat room, the story unfolds in a familiar pattern. Ashutosh Pawar set up 150 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz vineyards with the aim of creating his own label and turning the winery into a tourist destination. The financial crisis bit severely into his dream, however, and now a maximum of only 80,000 litres of the annual production is sold in Maharashtra, Goa, the UK and the USA.
Myriads of bottles, lined tightly together in a room, shared the space, I noticed, with cases of Soul Tree. That explained the export markets: Redwing either custom crushes or sells its stock off in bulk to brand owners, who have the commercial expertise and channels to the markets.
A brief tasting of three wines in a less-than-clean laboratory confirmed initial suspicions. The Sauvignon Blanc was two years old, all youthfulness a distant memory and only tired fruits remaining. The Zinfandel rosé, 18 months old, garnet in colour, pungent nose, was long dead. Then came the 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, which had almost jammy overripe dark fruits but with gripping tannins and an abundance of rubbery tones; it might once have been a very basic sub-entry-level wine.
VIDEO GALLERY