Wine adds synergy to food. So does ambience. Good food, wine and ambience are an unbeatable combination.This was amply demonstrated at our Wine Dinner at Olive on 25th April. In anticipation of good times, an unprecedented (with one exception at Italiannis last year) number of 47 persons showed up. And good time we sure had!

With over 10 snacks being served it was difficult to keep track of what all was being served including the finger-licking pizzas from their clay oven. We served a white Sicilian Insolia, Chardonnay and a red Barbera d’Asti as accompaniments. A minor deviation from our usual sit-down 5 course meals with 5 different wines.

The ‘Insolia’ was light bodied, pale yellow colour, clean chardonnay based wine with a good mouth feel bit rather short finish- a simple, everyday wine that one can enjoy with snacks. The Barbera was medium body, slightly acidic but intensely fruity wine that would go with practically any dish on the menu, when served cool, especially with pasta and pizzas.

The sit-down dinner followed in the courtyard, which has a definite Mediterranean look and the feeling of seaside breeze generated by the ‘mistifiers’ adorning all corners.
There was an awesome choice of appetizers and the main course; some members even felt that they had been erroneously offered the regular menu.

The white Vernaccia di San Gimignano is a DOCG wine from the town of same name in South of Siena in Tuscany. Slightly overrated as a DOCG wine (the highest quality appellation for Italy), it is a delicious medium bodied wine with a lot of perfume, slightly sweet but the flavour would go with any primo piatto. It certainly didl with my chicken salad.

An IGT Toscana (Indicazione Geografica Tipica) from Col d’Orcia, made primarily from Sangiovese grapes was a medium body, slightly tannic wine that complemented the main dishes on the menus. Again an enjoyable wine with all but perhaps, fish and chicken dishes cooked without much gravy. A perfect match for the sea - food risotto I had ordered.

An excellent job done by the dynamic and progressive owner, Mr. AD Singh who was also gracious enough to announce Bar membership privileges to all women members of the Delhi Wine Club (membership is open to women only, though they can invite male guests). Tanwar Nizam, GM and Vijaya Lakshmi- Viji who manages the Bar and all the staff did a magnificent job even though we had more than expected number.

Every person that attended this dinner requested us to have such an event once a month at this venue. Well, not only is it difficult to repeat a first-time success like the one at Olive, we cannot also overlook the fact that the wines we serve in a restaurant are expensive as they are fully duty paid @250 % and additionally an excise vend is paid at Rs. 135/- bottle. In comparison, we are generally fortunate to have most hotels let us use their quota of duty free wines and we pay only the vend fee. (Rs. 150/ for hotels). Even when they supply wine from their stock, they can afford to give us more expensive and better quality wines at similar rates.

At the end of the day, we must remember that our objective is to enjoy as many different types of wine as we can manage and learn more about grape varietals, wines and their quality.

For us food simply adds synergy to wine.

Subhash Arora
President