India has produced wine throughout its history, but its popularity waned after phylloxera, a pest which also heavily affected European wine production in the 19th century, ravaged many of the subcontinent’s vineyards.
However, one man is on a quest to get Indians drinking the grape nectar once again. Rajeev Samant’s journey to becoming a winemaker has been unusual — he studied engineering at Stanford University and got a high-flying job at Oracle after graduating. However, he left it all behind to return to his father’s birthplace, Nashik, a city in western India, and started experimenting with different vines.
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“I really wanted to do something that I was really passionate about when I wake up every day, and that was something that I wasn’t feeling in my corporate job. I strapped on a backpack and just started moving across the world, landing up here in Nashik.
“There is a world of difference between the way I feel now about what I’m doing, full of passion, compared to what I used to do. Every day I’m so excited to take on the challenges. It’s my baby, it’s as simple as that,” he says.
