Mr. Rajiv Samant and Mr. Kerry Damskey are the co-partners as well as pioneer of the famous and successful vineyards in India called Sula Wines. It is geographically located in Western Region Nashik, India.
Though Mr. Kerry Damskey is one of the co-partner and Consultant wine maker for Sula Vineyards in India, he is basically from San Francisco, California, USA. He lives in heart of the Sonoma Wine County and completed his master’s degree in both Oenology and Viticulture from world famous UC Davis university of California in early 70s.
Mr. Kerry has 11 years experience in Wine Making and also associated with 14 vineyards in Napa, Sonoma and Washington states in US and Nasik India. Namely, Flora Springs (Napa), Dutcher Crossing Winery, Sawkar Family Vineyards He takes very challenging wine making jobs to try growing the wine grapes in new regions.
He pursed his carrier in various wineries in California and hand an opportunity to meet Mr. Rajiv Samant and visited India in 1995 to setup Sula winery outside of Nasik in a family owned property. He comes to India frequently and he feels he is more famous in India than in USA.
He had several initial challenges at the beginning to grow the wine grapes in high altitude area of Nashik (around 2000 feet above the sea level which takes away the humidity). One of the other challenges was to grow the wine in winter. The climate condition of Nashik (India) during winter is equivalent to summer in California USA and also business and wine making infrastructure, Cultural and educational issue about the wine in India at that time.
Finally, Sula solved all the issues and they could come up with successful white wines like Sauvignon Blanc and Chenin Blanc which is very smooth and easy to drink and it is quickly adopted by Indian and American wine market.
Mr. Kerry feels Indian would like to taste the wine produced from India. He feels taste palates for Indians are unique and naturally interesting, so he had a lots challenge to make the wine should be suitable with Indian food. Initially he felt white wine will do better than red wine wines, but red wine also picked up by Indians. He also appreciated the Indians adopted wine culture much faster than Americans.
Kerry’s plan is now to produce world class Red wines from unique Indian region and frequently traveling to India and training employees in USA during the grape harvest time.
"Wine" is the Global culture, for social gathering and it completes the food. The upper and middle class Indians are traveling globally and takes wine back to home. Due to that cultural change, Kerry feels the next generation Indians will be very well educated and successful in the wine culture.
He strongly suggests, India needs good university like UC Davis for wine, teaching and mentoring, wine labs to work with, model vineyards. Most of the wine making materials are imported. Unified label laws from all the state governments will help wineries to market the product quickly across all the states. Now every state requires different messages in labels and in some states required separate label approval process. More foreign wines should be available to the consumers to taste and learn. More you taste different wines then you can differentiate the wine quality.
His future vision to a develop vineyard in foot hills of Himalaya. He and his wife has own vineyard called Palmeri Wines producing only few hundred cases of special Mountain Grown Syrah. You can also download this word document to learn more about his services.
He made India Wines very famous both in India as well as in USA. Great Job!.
Venki