Sula Vineyards Dindori Reserve Shiraz 2024
£12.75
The wine
The Dindori Reserve is Sula's senior Shiraz, from the estate's best vineyards north of Nashik and given proper oak ageing. Expect concentrated dark fruit, black pepper and sweet spice over a firmer structure than the standard bottling, with the oak adding vanilla and depth.
Dindori taluka sits at the higher end of Sula's altitude range on the Deccan plateau, and the cool nights there are what allow a red of this concentration to keep its acidity and aromatic lift. It was the first Indian wine to win a major international trophy, which did a good deal for the country's standing.
The producer
Sula Vineyards
View all Sula Vineyards winesSula Vineyards was founded in 1999 by Rajeev Samant, who left a career in Silicon Valley and returned to his family's land at Nashik in Maharashtra to plant grapes where his father had grown mangoes. It is now by some distance India's largest wine producer.
India was not an obvious place to try. The country has a long history of viticulture but almost none of winemaking, and the modern industry dates only from the 1980s. Nashik works because of altitude: the vineyards sit at 600 to 900 metres on the Deccan plateau, high enough for cool nights despite the latitude, and the monsoon arrives in June and clears by September, leaving a dry ripening season. Vines are pruned twice a year, once to establish the canopy and once for fruit, which is a rhythm found in few other wine regions.
Sula built the Indian wine market as much as it supplied it, opening the country's first tasting room and running a music festival at the winery that draws tens of thousands. The Dindori Reserve wines are the senior range.
