Day 38/ 365 – Trip to Sula Vineyards

The next day we decided to visit Sula Vineyards. However, as mentioned in my previous post we were staying in my friend’s empty apartment. Since we arrived late the previous evening, there was no one to clean up the place. So today morning, I called up my friend and asked him if he knew someone who would clean the place. The house cleaning person arrived after one hour and took almost an hour to clean the place up. In the mean time, I went to the local grocery store and got some Maggie for breakfast. We prepared breakfast, waited for the house cleaning person to finish his work, and then got ready to leave. By the time we left, it was almost 2 pm and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I tried searching the route on the Here Maps of my Nokia Lumia 620, but was not able to find one (There needs to be Google maps app for Windows). So we relied on the old Indian way – which is ask for guidance and route. After asking a couple of people and getting lost once, we finally found our way to the Sula Vineyards. Once we left the main road, the drive to the Vineyards is quite pleasant and you enjoy driving here through a couple of little villages which fall on the route. We reached our destination around 3:00pm and registered for wine tasting and facility tour for 3:30pm. We registered for 6 wine tasting which cost us Rs. 250 per person. The tour of the facility is short and brief. The best part is the wine tasting part. We tried 6 different wines – I don’t remember the names of all – but there was a sparkling wine, three white wines, couple of red ones – Dindori and Rasa. The tour guide taught us in brief as how to recognize an old wine from a younger wine based on its color (tilt the glass against light – lighter the shade younger the wine for white wines – opposite is true for Red wines), how to smell the aroma of the wine (swirl the wine in the glass for a few seconds and then smell) to even how to hold the wine glass (don’t hold the glass by the palm). The entire tour lasted for 45 mins and was quite educational and fun. However, we didn’t get to crush grapes as it isn’t grape season yet. Post our wine tour, we decided to buy wines for family and friends. We also ended up buying Grape seed oil. Apparently it is good for cooking and can be used in salads as well vegetable cooking. We spent around 2 hours at Sula Vineyards, before deciding to head out towards Nasik city.  There is also a resort in case people wish to stay over for the night, however, being Friday it was going to cost us Rs. 6500 per couple and hence we decided to skip it.

The drive towards Nasik city in the evening was extremely chaotic. The problem which most car drivers in India would face in any tier 2 cities is the number of the bikes which are on the road. Nasik is no exception to the rule and there are plenty of two wheelers on the city roads and one has to be extremely careful while driving. We were extremely hungry when we reached the main highway and once again decided to halt at Kolhapur Express for an early dinner. After having a sumptuous dinner, we decided to explore the city via car. Big mistake!!! Since we didn’t know where we wanted to go, we just kept driving aimlessly and got stuck in multiple traffic junctions and at one time were thoroughly lost in the Panchvati area. We finally managed to find our way out (thanks to the GPS) and then decided to head back home with plans for next day ready. Next destination – Trimbakeshwar temple, Coin Museum, Panchvati and Deolali. (Pics to follow later)