Helen and Randall on the road

Back in January we heard about the Indian wine revolution when we decided to  risk ordering a bottle of local wine from a  hotel restaurant. We were impressed by the Sula sparkling so decided to find out a bit more about it, the outcome of which was a two-night stay in the ‘Beyond‘ resort in Nashik, home of India’s grape-growing industry and the Sula Vineyard.

The beautiful Beyond resort.

The pool over-looking vineyards, lake and mountains . Unheated but I did brave it.

Gorgeous wet-room bathroom with plants growing in it!

Water feature in the open plan reception/garden area.

In the reception/lobby area there were some examples of old kit from their early days.

The pool at night.

Beyond from the driveway.

To get to the Sula vineyard, a couple of kilometres away, we borrowed slightly ricketty but basically functional bicycles from Beyond. Their friendly on-site mechanic sorted out various things with a bit of percussive maintenance (that is, he hit things until they were satisfactory).

The short journey was interesting as  neither of us had any gears and we were sharing the narrow, winding road with the odd packed truck driving at speed. Still, we got encouraging cheers and the odd jeer from small children at the side of the road (the red, puffing foreigners were clearly the most amusing thing they had seen for ages) and three-to-a-moped young men.

Arriving was quite a relief as we cycled up the long driveway through vineyards, parked the bikes, and headed in for a cool glass of water in the bar.

The view from the terrace bar, Sula.

We did the basic wine tour and tasting, which was interesting although not as detailed as the ones we had done in Australia and New Zealand, and was also slightly marred by the noisy families with ill-disciplined children who had inexplicably thought this would be a great day out for toddlers. Misanthropic – moi?

Wine. Lots of Wine.

LOTS of wine.

The new bottling process.

A bottle of Sula Brut and some cheese and salami on the terrace of the bar,