Six wines that’ll sing with the monsoons!
Every season deserves its own wine list for good reason. Summers call for refreshing bubblies, chilled down floral whites and roses while winters need opulent and tannic red wines that insulate the self from falling temperatures and warm the soul with full bodied expression. Spring and autumn call for modest version of the above but with India’s wild monsoon interlude, the script is still a bit green and continues to evolve just like the nascent Indian palate. Interestingly this season, especially in Mumbai, can require plucking out wines from the summer and winter lists because a given rainy day oscillates from windy wet to intensely hot and humid and a sudden revert back to cold and breezy. Welcome to monsoons in Mumbai. So this unique weather system demands an equal custom wine selection. Perhaps, crisp and refreshing sparklers, whites and roses are best to get through the warm patches and maybe even for some casual day drinking in the course of an afternoon shower. And late evenings are an opportune time to uncork them elegant and full bodied reds when skies loom with dark, pregnant clouds about to burst and the palate longs for the reassuring depth of ripe fruit and sumptuous tannins. Well then, it’s time to be monsoon ready with a clutch of ferments handpicked for the wet season. Cheers!