Good art meets great wine
Art, strangely, has its own ways of functioning; it comes with its own accompaniments; it chooses its own reasons. So, when good art meets great wine, it picks a palace for the rendezvous, unrolls a red carpet without a crease, stacks the wine glasses symmetrically and calls the tryst The Waiting, the name not without its own rationale.
Kolkata-based artist Sanjoy Ghosh has waited years to show in New Delhi and when he did so recently, he came with a wine label created specially for Vin Opera (www.operawines.com), a new entrant that is redefining everything about wine in the country. But Ghosh did not walk the direct Kolkata-Delhi route, he came through Italy. Rather Italian wine.
For Ghosh has painted art labels for Vin Opera's Italian wines. Not that he is the first artist to do so. Picasso, Dali, Chagall have all dipped brushes in paint to create art labels but Ghosh has the distinction of being the first Indian artist to paint for a European wine brand.
On Vin Opera's Barbara Piemonte label you would find a beautiful woman with large eyes and flowing hair, on Brunello di Montalcino, bold strokes would come together to make human figures. "No, I was not swirling wine when I painted wine canvases, but wine had to be the inspiration," says Ghosh, the Kolkata-based artist who at 12 discovered art as his calling and at 18 had his first solo exhibition. Art knocked at Ghosh's door rather fortuitously.
At 5, Ghosh had lost the use of his limbs, he recovered two years later only to find that his right hand had been paralysed forever. Undaunted, he picked his first lessons from Mrinmoy Mukherjee and today straddles two worlds - as an insurance company employee during the day and an artist at night.
However, much before the Italian wine made its celebrated foray into India to take the Indian connoisseurs by surprise, Vikash Gupta was pouring over details about wine that would go perfect with the Indian palate.
"It began as an entrepreneurial risk, but on way I fell in love with wine." So, Vikash and his three partners signed on the dotted line for a joint venture with Enoteca Regionale Emilia Romagna of Italy to bring the best wine into India.
"We wanted to treat wine differently. Instead of picking crates randomly that would have labels in a foreign language, we wanted to create the magic with wine exclusively produced and bottled in Italy for us.
To take the Indianness further, our labels are also in English," adds Vikash who looks back with pride at the countless hours that he spent making the final selection: Chianti Rufina, dry ruby red with a winey bouquet; Lambrusco with ripe red berry aroma and a sweet taste; Pignoletto, light coloured wine with very fruity taste and Sangiovese di Romagno, dry ruby red wine that pairs perfectly with boiled meat and curries. Vikash is pleased with the response, but he is not sitting on his laurels.
His vineyard in Nashik would soon churn the best of wine and in his Opera Wine Academy even the uninitiated can pick the first wine lessons. For Vikash believes that everyone who serves or relishes wine should know about it.
So good are the Vin Opera wines that they could even tempt Bacchus to another glass. When that happens, Vikash Gupta would happily swirl wine. A Vin Opera wine. What else! (www.deepblueink.com)