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Fratelli Vineyards, Akluj – A haven for Oenophiles

From the Travel Diary of Inderjeet Rathod, Business Support, Destination Knowledge Centre

The 240-acre Fratelli Vineyards at Akluj is located 331 kms southeast of Mumbai. There are about 12 different varieties of grapes, imported from France, and planted here to produce the finest wines of India.

Wine is best enjoyed at leisure. Similarly, learning more about wines requires leisurely time at hand to fully understand and appreciate them. For a truly enjoyable ‘Wine Tour’ one needs to stay for at least 3 nights at Fratelli Vineyards in Akluj. Experienced Sommeliers are often heard saying – ‘Let the Wine speak for itself’. The wine-tasting session at Fratelli Vineyards is much like having a tête-à-tête with the local terroir.

Best time to visit

The months between August and March are ideal to visit the vineyards as they are lush green but if you are flexible, we would suggest visiting during the harvest months (January – March). This is the best time to visit because the vineyards are laden with grapes and there are lots of activities and events (grape stomping, wine master classes, etc) scheduled for those months.

Activities at Fratelli Vineyards

A Vineyard tour followed by a guided walk inside the Winery:

Fratelli Wines owns 240 acres of land in three villages around Akluj – Motewadi, Garewad, and Nimgaon. All these villages are about 10 – 15 km away from each other. To go explore the Vineyards one has three different options at disposal – Just walking through them; riding an ATV (All-Terrain Vehicle) on the dirt tracks through the rows of vines or riding in a military styled open–top jeep owned by Fratelli.

Motewadi Vineyards are located adjacent to the Winery and the Guest House. Though not the largest among them, it does cover a huge area at this location. The Vineyards here can be explored either on foot or on ATVs. However, to visit Vineyards in the other two locations – Nimgaon and Garewad, one has to use a larger vehicle that is available at your disposal – either your own car or the open–top jeep owned by Fratelli.

Garewad Vineyards are located near Syrah Hill, a quick 15-minute drive from Motewadi. On top of a small hillock here, a small shack has been built by Fratelli which commands a majestic 360-degree view of the vineyards below. Inside the shack, there are wooden planks that double up as tables and benches. There is no better spot for a leisurely sip of wine followed by lunch, which the Fratelli Staff carries from the Guest House. While coming back to the Winery from Garewad Vineyards, one can visit Nimgaon Vineyards, which are devoid of any place to sit and observe.

During the Vineyard Tour, one of the senior staff at Fratelli Winery accompanies you to tell you more about the varieties of the imported grapes planted in the vineyards. Around 3,50,000 vine saplings were handpicked in France and Italy and brought in here to be planted at this acreage.

If you happen to visit the Vineyard between the last week of January to about the last week of February, you can also get to see the harvesting of the grapes being done by the local workers.

A Tour of the Winery:

A supervisor from the Winery is assigned to guests to show various stages of Wine processing. It starts from the Harvesting Room’s Crushing Section where you get to see the De-stemmer Crusher machine. The freshly plucked bunches of grapes are first dumped here initially. This machine then separates the grapes from their stems and then crushes them mechanically with a sterilized rubber crusher. Thereafter the remainder is transferred into the Pneumatic Press machine, where the mechanically crushed grapes are pressed in a vacuum. The juice that comes out of it is then transferred directly to the fermentation tanks using sterilized hoses. It is kept unmoved in the tanks for 24 hours to allow the solids in the juice to settle down. Later the clearer part is taken out and transferred into another Fermentation tank. Here yeast is inoculated into the juice, which consumes the sugar and converts it into alcohol. There are three types of Tanks available here – 20,000-litre capacity, 10,000-litre capacity, and 5,000-litre capacity. All the Fermentation tanks are insulated with dimpled steel jackets to maintain an ambient temperature which is of prime importance in the process of fermentation. After the fermentation process is complete the juice gets converted into wine. This is the time when raking is to be done. The dead yeast which settles down at the bottom of the tank is removed from the wine and discarded. The wine is then transferred into another tank. The wine is then kept in the tanks for about 3 – 4 months during which wine-stability or protein-stability processes are done. Finally, the wine is blended according to the different brands of Fratelli. There are 34 different brands of wines which are produced from 12 different varieties of grapes grown in the vineyards here.

A Wine-tasting session:

At Fratelli, there are three venues where a wine-tasting session can be organised. The first is the exclusive Wine-tasting Room on the ground floor of the Guest House adjacent to the Winery building. The second is the Cellar in the basement with a small room surrounded by wine bottles with a table in the centre and a spotlight on top of it. The third is the rustic shack at Garewad Vineyard with a 360° view of the surrounding area with rows and rows of vines planted neatly.

The best of the above venues is the beautifully decorated Wine-tasting room adjacent to the Winery building. There are framed photographs and descriptions of the various wine brands of Fratelli on the wall. One can also see several barrels bedecked with Fratelli Wine bottles displayed prominently. In the centre is a brand new, square-shaped, bar table and a few chairs with a few wine bottles kept on the wrought iron stands.

In the wine-tasting room cheese crackers, soup sticks, and roasted Euryale ferox seeds are laid out neatly on the counter. The host brings out a few bottles of different wines that are meant to be tasted. 3 of them are White Wines and rest 2 are Red Wines. A serving of 30 ml of each wine is given to the guests to taste. The host describes the highlights of each Wine in terms of ‘Vintage’; ‘Grape Type’; ‘Tasting Notes’; ‘Suggestions for pairing’ and ‘Serving temperature’.

Accommodation

Fratelli Guest House:

Fratelli has an onsite Guest House with 04 large rooms, located just next to their State-of-the-Art Winery building. Constructed in an ultra-modern glass and steel frame and finished completely in white, the exterior is undeniably classy. All the 4 rooms are furnished quite tastefully. Each room has a king-sized bed and a spacious attached washroom.

There is a lounge down the alley which faces the Vineyards on one side and the Winery on the other. It has a large and comfortable sofa set in one corner facing a 50-inch LCD TV; in another corner lies a pool table; a 4-seater coffee table is placed in another; and a huge 10-seater dining table occupies space in the remaining corner. There is an open modular kitchen and a well-stocked double-door fridge with bottles of Fratelli Wines. A small team of helpers at the Winery takes care of the hospitality in the Guesthouse. The cook at the Guesthouse can prepare simple Indian and Italian dishes; he takes prior orders from the guests before preparing the food.

Accessibility

Fratelli Vineyards is best accessed from Pune by road, being only 185 km. It takes about 4 hrs from Pune to reach Fratelli Vineyards.

Nearest Airport: Pune.

Weaving it into an itinerary:

Mumbai – Nasik- Aurangabad -Pune – Akluj – Ganpatipule – Sawantwadi – Goa