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With 320 wines tasted and assessed this year, Sonal Holland MW’s India Wine Awards 2019 is getting set to announce the best wine in India

Fun, games and a whole lot of work.

That, in brief, summed up the third edition of the India Wine Awards (IWA) jury session held in Mumbai on 12^th & 13^th September 2019 – two days of an exacting tasting schedule punctuated with witty one liners and gags, bonhomie over food and intense debate over wine as the jury raced the clock to judge the 320 wines – Indian and imported – nominated for the awards to identify the best wine in India.

While it was a whirlwind couple of days, Sonal Holland MW, the founder and chairperson of the Awards showed little visible signs of strain – she says her amped up all-women’s team did such a great job behind the scenes that it took the stress of the annual mega-event off her shoulders. “I just had to get my hair done and show up,” she joked.

Joking apart, there was much behind-the-scenes micro-management to get the awards – its task to identify the best wine in India – to this happy place. IWA’s head of operations Apurva Gawande admitted, “There is a lot that goes on at the back end… you can never be sure how it will go until it’s done.” The biggest task once the nominations were in was to get the coding nailed, the hundreds of bottles brown-bagged, their labels meticulously obscured. Then the service staff had to be briefed on serving temperatures, pour sizes and efficient clearance – key to keep the flow going through the day. “There is always madness that goes on behind the scenes, but we can’t give in to any stress.”

In fact, there was an uncharacteristic calm in Holland’s team before the event. The Leela’s EAM Abhisek Basu recalls the flurry of emails exchanged before last year’s event. “This year there were barely any,” he recounts, “In fact, I started getting worried a couple of weeks ahead of the event.” Holland confirms, “We were exceptionally calm, in zen mode. We knew what needed to be done.”

Last year, in her briefing to the jury prior to the event she spoke of how she wanted the 2^nd edition to be ‘bigger, brighter and shinier’ than the inaugural one. That happened. So, what did she expect for the 3rd edition this year? “I wanted the IWA to be accepted by the (wine) industry, and it has been.” Given the growing buzz about an impending economic slowdown, they thought that crossing last year’s nominations would be tough, but, she says, “we hit the mark.”

Now with Day Two of the 2-day jury session at The Leela Mumbai done, the excitement has subsided much like the pounding rain and frenzied drumbeats which marked the Ganpati visarjan the day before. It is time for Holland to reflect on the events of the last couple of days. After judging the final tasting session of food and wine pairing, we sit down for a coffee and a quick recap.

2019’s 16-member jury had a few familiar faces and several new ones. “I think this year’s jury lineup was the best. We included many more judges from the industry – sommeliers, hotel general managers, restaurateurs – they constitute the most important part of the trade and are a direct link to consumers. So it was a strong jury with discerning palates.”

We discuss the single biggest change Holland has instituted in the judging process: the tasting of Indian and international wines together in the same flights. This time, flights were defined solely by grape variety or blend, and the judges tasted and assessed the wines blind without knowing whether the wines were Indian or imported. Why this modification? I asked.