You can’t just breeze through India’s biggest wine region in a day can you? Not if you’re an aspiring wine maker anyhow.  

Vallonné is a boutique vineyard and winery, really part of the movement to improve acceptance in increase quality of Indian wines. They have a very impressive winery here, with all the equipment you could need to make great wines.

What looks harder is growing the grapes. The viticulture looked nothing like you’d see in Australia or France, with a rather meagre canopy strung on haphazard wires and a lot more weeds than you’d normally expect.

We had a great day, meeting the winemaker here and tasting the wines.

Most fascinating was how they’d had to adapt the growing cycle for the vines to deal with the tropical climate. They prune twice, to mimic the dormant period vines would experience in a colder climate, otherwise the vines would grow and fruit all year round, with the fruit being damaged by the wet season.

Stand-out wine was definitely the 10th Anniversary Cabernet Sauvignon.