Set in the D’Monte park in Bandra this wine festival promised much and created a hype,but on visiting it we realised that it was poorly organised and surprisingly dead.Now that does not say anything about how much paperwork we had to go through ,registration forms,wrist bands,D’Monte recreation club entry pass,Wine tasting coupons,cheese tasting coupons,disposable glass collection whew!
There were hardly any foreign wine stalls present,mostly there were Indian wines and wineries promoting their brands.The Indian wines from Four Seasons, Nine Hills, Reveilo, Vallonné, Zampa and Good Earth Winery were present with their complete range of wines. The international flavour was visible through the presence of Moncaro from Italy, being imported by Riona Wines and Jacobs Creek of Pernod Ricard, from Australia. The newspaper and the website promised culinary contests,grape stomping contests to name a few and some of the finest wine tastings,but there wasn’t even a compere there to bring life to the event.We had been told that we have to be there by 12.30 for registrations and the contest would start at 1 pm ,which finally started at 2.No announcements whatsoever.The grape stomping was a lot of fun though and we went silly jumping and trying to extract maximum amount of juice possible from the grapes and what added to our delight was when we won by a clear margin :)!
Later on the Facebook page ,I did see a lot of interesting videos and pics with people dancing and participating in culinary shows.It seems to me that it was evening that the festival actually warmed up.It’s a interesting start to introducing us to different kinds of wines and giving us the opportunity to taste a variety under one roof (12 small glasses of wine to taste +12 types of cheeses all this @500 INR).I do hope in the future there is a better representation of brands ,specially the foreign ones.
