Vallonné Vineyards’ red dessert wine – Vin de Passerillage

As sweet aroma wafts over the vine- yards, carried by a warm breeze blowing through a straw house, where rows of Syrah grapes hang, waiting to dry into raisins. The hand-picked grapes are tied into bunches and hung on long wires that run across the breadth of this specially put-together straw house. A straw house ensures adequate warmth and circulation of air through the rows of grapes. In 2024, Vallonné used three tonnes of Syrah grapes, and it took 150 women workers three days to tie and hang the grapes. This is the unique process of making Vallonné Vineyards’ red dessert wine – Vin de Passerillage and is, incidentally, the only red dessert wine made in India.

Its production follows the straw wine process where mature grapes are picked at just the right stage to ensure a fine balance of sweetness and acidity, and then dried in the sun for over a month.

The time for harvesting and drying the grapes is March, just after the chilly winter, when temperatures in Nashik show a sharp rise, although unseasonal rains in recent times have often played spoilsport. It takes one month for the grapes to turn into raisins, shrivelled and dry, but filled with a sweet and fla- vourful nectar.

Winemaker Sanket Gawand walks through the straw house every day to monitor the drying of the grapes. “I was inspired to make a red dessert wine while tasting a bottle of Amarone della Valpolicella. I selected Syrah because I was confident of using its inherent char- acteristics to make a good dessert wine,” says Gawand.

When pressed, these dried berries yield just about a drop of juice. The juice is fermented in steel tanks and the fermentation is stopped at a point to retain the natural sugar. At the end of almost six months, what emerges is a delightful sweet wine with flavours of fig, honey, ripe plum and blackber- ries, all balanced with a hint of acidity. Three tonnes of grapes give 1000 bottles of 375ml each.

“It is a very labourious, time consum-ing process and unique in India. As a boutique producer, we craft limited edition batches of wines that reflect our winemaking philosophy which is innovation and experimentation,” says Shailendra Pai, founder, Vallonné Vine- yards. Vallonné’s Syrah Vin de Passeril- lage (VDP) was named ‘Best in Show’ at the India Wines and Spirits Awards 2024, and was greatly appreciated by Jancis Robinson at the Navratna dinner hosted at Masque, Mumbai during her visit to India last October.