SulaFest: Where boys dance with girls *gasp!*
SulaFest 2011: Five bands for 2,000 people -- plus food, grape stomping and cocoa.New Delhi had its art summit. Jaipur had its literary festival. But not all the fun goes north.
This weekend the party bus follows the national wine pipeline to Nashik for the February 5 Sulafest -- an all-day, all-evening party on the Sula vineyard estate, three hours from Mumbai.
Sulafest, now in its fourth year, brings together five of the country’s best live music acts, among them, Pentagram and Midival Punditz, to entertain about 2,000 festival-going oenophiles.
Rajeev Samant: Chief wine evangelist
“Wine is not to be enjoyed alone. We associate wine with the good things in life. This is one day for people to come to see the vineyard and also to just lie back, relax and enjoy the music."
“In our first year we got into a spot of trouble," says Samant, who, in a recent interview, called himself India’s 'chief wine evangelist,' "because we ended later that we should have. I think it might have been 2 a.m. The local news channel got wind of this and created a big story about debauchery in Nashik. I remember one of the questions the police asked me was if it were true that boys were dancing with girls. I was completely floored! Since then, we have made sure we have really good community relations. We also make sure we shut down on time!”
“Our whole sound system got shorted but luckily our sound engineer had a spare system so we moved everything indoors and Jalebi Cartel played in the restaurant. It turned out to be great, but after that we started ensuring that we protect against the rain too.”
Samant set up Sula, India’s most widely consumed and distributed wine brand, over 13 years ago.
With 70 percent share of an estimated Rs 500 crore national wine market, Samant felt ready to join his business with his love of music.
Recalling the exhilaration he felt hearing bands like the Grateful Dead and the Red Hot Chili Peppers out in the open as a student at Stanford University in California, he says, “Those experiences blew me away and I wanted to re-create that.”
Aside from the music, the crowd, drawn from within Nashik, as well as Pune and Mumbai, can try everything from grape stomping to three variants of fortune telling (tarot card, parrot card and coffee cup readings), scour through a flea market, try Cointreau-based cocktails (Sula is Remy Cointreau’s distributor in India), munch on dark chocolates while sipping wine and getting a foot massage at the Cadbury Bournville Indulgence Lounge, title sponsors of the festival.
Festival food will be a localized combination of classic festival food such as grilled burgers and Indian chaat counters.
Now about the wine ...
While no new wines are debuting at Sulafest this year, Samant says the collection on offer is one that people wouldn’t normally have access to.
“Sulafest gives you a chance to try about 15 of our wines at one place. Most people have really only tried five or six.”
Samant encourages all visitors to check out India’s first Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel vineyards, 13 and nine years old respectively.
After sunset, he recommends standing right up at the top of the amphitheater to not only get good views of the performing bands, but to take in grand views of the surrounding lake and hillside. All better on wine, of course.
Sulafest, February 5, 2011; sulafest2011.com
Gates open 12:30 p.m., ends 10 p.m.; Tickets available on Book My Show and at select retail outlets across Mumbai, Pune, Nashik.
SulaFest has an entry fee of Rs 800 per person, which gets you in the door but be prepared to pay for everything inside.
A glass of wine will run you about Rs 125, and a foot massage at the Bournville lounge Rs 300. Budget anywhere from Rs 3,000 to 5,000, including the ticket price.
