Raghu Sawkar, born on April 10,1949 in a small town Near  Gadag  in  North  Karnataka state, went school in Bangalore and  Hubli, graduated as Medical Student in 1972 and moved to UK for further studies. At that time he exposed to German wines and fall in love with that. He moved to Ohio, USA in 1975 for further study and practices in "Vascular and General Surgery"  He practiced at Cleveland, Ohio from 1981 to 1998. He was  introduced to fine wines and  food pairing  by  a dentist friend named  Frank  Kysala in Cleveland.  He is the president  of Cleveland Wine  tasting club. He learnt a lot about wines from him and decided to jump in to the Wine business with passion.

In 1998 He bought 23 acres vineyard in Sonoma and created the Raghu Sakar Family Vineyards.  He took all the old vines and planted SYRAH Merlot and Cab Franc. The first crop came in 2001 and first vintage Syrah was released in 2002. He attended 2 years full time Agriculture School in Napa to learn Grape growing and wine making. He met Kerry Damski a (wine maker for Sula winery in India) in Sonoma. He was his consultant wine maker and Raghu was an assistant wine maker and grape grower. He cultivated 20 Acres in Sonoma MT. Road. Production is only 1800 cases per year and he also buys some good Cab grapes in Napa. That brings his total production to 2200 cases. He make quality wines from this small estate. We keep the yield to 2.5 tons per acre to produce high quality wines. His expertise is in wine making, tasting and food pairing specially with Indian food. He also collects wines from around the world, at one time he had 10,000 rare wines in his temperature controlled cellar.
 

Raghu Sawkar wines widely available everywhere in USA in high wine restaurants and stores.

His future plans to open a winery and wine bars in Bangalore, India

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http://sawkar-vineyard.com