There are two types of travel: the one that enriches you, teaches you about different cultures and customs and broadens your mind. Then there is the other type: the one where the only thing you rack up is frequent flyer miles. Luckily for me, none of my trips are so devoid of joy. Ironically, none of my trips are devoid of rich food and lavish drink either and I always return a man with a

Posted in: Old World Wines, New World Wines | Comment (0) >>

Spain is one mad country, in a good way of course. I may not understand many things about the Spanish - their love for killing animals, their refusal to effectuate the ban on smoking in public places, their belief that ham is fat-free and even curative, and their denial that Tempranillo can often exhibit an oxidised edge!

I am the first to admit that I know nothing about Spanish wines (or wines in

Posted in: Wines, Old World Wines | Comment (0) >>

If you have been bored enough to follow my writings, then you might have marked that I show rare signs of any improvement at all. Unrelated a comment as that may seem, I just thought I'd put it right there in the beginning. Pity has its fan following too.

But if writing lacks the fervour to move you, just on certain rare occasions, where such an excuse is the best permissible defence, we can

Posted in: Wine Events, Wine and Food | Comment (0) >>

So here I am in the most metropolitan city in the world, where English has been relegated to an optional language and you can hear more tongues in a single bus ride than Christopher Columbus did on his entire trip. This is London and I am here with a purpose, for a change, that doesn't just involve shopping till my bank feels a minor dent in its holdings, and my accountant has a minor cardiac!

Posted in: Wine Tasting, Wine Review | Comment (3) >>

The problem with wine is not how it is made, or drunk, but how it is presented between the making and the drinking. The bigger problem, of course, is the fact that I always find so much wrong with the world of wine (or world in general) but please reader, for a minute, focus.

Let's face it. We will never know enough about wines. We prefer to leave that whole tasting and judging bit to those boys who like to go by the name of wine writers. The rest of us actually have a life. This is perhaps where we are going wrong. Delegation has its downside and leaving things up to people who rarely step outside or get invited to the really cool parties, means that we have a lot of boring unimaginative stuff to sift and work our way through before we can extract anything useful, or shareable in public.

Posted in: Wine in India, Wine Awareness | Comment (2) >>

The thing with wine is that it has a capacity to bestow humility.  I am not talking about drunken antics which make it to all our friends' wall of shame. I am talking about the sheer length and breadth of knowledge that this field accommodates.  A lifetime is too short to learn of your ignorance in the field of wines.

I thought myself to be quite a maverick for already knowing about Nero d'Avola -

Posted in: Wine Tasting, Italian Wine | Comment (0) >>

Blog: Magandeep Singh

There is more to Italy than pasta and Marlon Brando, and both are more American than anything else. I have often been to Vinitaly in the lovely town of Verona (think Romeo and Juliet) and each time I have come back a learned man. Mostly, they were kind enough to invite me; the learning however was mostly pieced together through my keen and supernatural powers of observation.

Posted in: Wine Events, Italian Wine | Comment (0) >>

Blog: Magandeep Singh

The trouble with Indian cuisine is that it has the most possessive and over-zealous of people to protect it - us Indians. So opposed are we to any form of change or modification that anyone may try and induce in this style of cooking that it is rejected as substandard and compromised even before being given a fair duelling chance.

But then that is true of most countries.

Posted in: Wine and Food, Indian Wine | Comment (2) >>

Blog: Magandeep Singh

It was while having a shower that I realised that old writers had it easy. Nothing had been written, which left them with the entire fairway to prance about on. The simple probability of stringing a few random words together to end up with a sonnet was much higher then than it is today. The novelty of saying “I Love You” made it easy to get away with forgetting an

Posted in: Wine in India, Indian Wine | Comment (0) >>

Blog: Magandeep Singh

Wine sparks off so many conversations. Little good comes of them, but many find them healthy. Much like a treadmill really: running without going anywhere and definitely unimaginative as a way to lose calories.

The problem is this: wine suffers from being itself. If it is a reserved and sombre drink then people complain that it is too fuddy-duddy. If it tries to be cool and

Posted in: Wine Events, Wine Awareness, Indian Wine | Comment (4) >>