Delhi Wine Dinner last Thursday at the outdoor Sevilla Restaurant of Hotel Claridges was to celebrate the famous German Oktoberfest with a difference, with the members enjoying the newly introduced Piper Heidsieck champagne and four wines from the Franconian estate Schönborn with paired Mediterranean food by Chef Ravi Saxena’s team

Putting together a wine dinner for the Delhi Wine Club is not an easy task as our Club President Subhash Arora will tell you- one faces all sorts of odds be it from the wines for the evening arriving in typical Japanese ‘just in time” inventory management fashion to last minute cancellations due to multiple reasons-as in this case the good ol’ Commonwealth Games.

With the Navratras scheduled to commence from the 8th of October, Subhash had decided to offer our members on the eve, an opportunity to sample some Franconian (one of the German wine regions) Wines at the Sevilla Restaurant at the Claridges located bang in the middle of Lutyens Delhi which was criss-crossed by the dedicated CWG traffic lanes.

So would our members be able to reach the venue given the ominous warnings of traffic doom during the CWG being given out by the media and what would be the best route to take and with the police control center being in the hotel would we be allowed to enter? These and similar queries on Subhash’s Blackberry couldn’t have done his acidity much good!

But for all the prophets of doom, things turned out very smooth indeed-turning on its head Dilbert’s saying of what’s the point of being punctual as there would be no one around to appreciate it! Kudos to the people of Delhi most of whom stayed home that evening and to the cops who smoothed the way for the rest, making the drive to the Claridges a breeze, irrespective of where you were coming from.

Well before our STA (standard arrival time) of 8.30 pm, there was large enough a quorum to warrant an early opening of the Piper Heidsieck Brut Champagne – a wonderfully crisp flag bearer of the house of Piper Heidsieck and easily the best quaff of the evening . And given the fact that a fair number of members and their guests were from the German ex-pat community, we had all hands on deck by 8.45pm- surely a DWC dinner first!!

With the theme of the evening being Germany and Oktoberfest, we were set up to taste a line-up of German wines from the Franconian VDP Estate of Graf von Schönborn- a reputed producer from the Franconia with an excellent estate in Rheingau as well. This was once again a welcome tweak from our usual multi- producer line up as after a long time, during the sit down part of our dinner, we had a single wine producer tasting across varietals and that too from a single vintage year .
To guide us through this relatively uncharted geographic area in the northern Bavaria for our wine members, was the noted wine expert from Germany- Joel Payne, who kept the gathering enthralled with his deep knowledge despite the fact that the Champagne had run out mid way thru his chat!!

Two whites commenced the Graf von Schönborn lineup –the Weisserburgunder Kabinett and the Riesling Kabinett, 2009 vintage. Both these easy drinking wines had a faint undertone of sweetness and were overshadowed by the star of the evening –the ravioli with a flavourful and rich tomato sauce topped with crispy black forest ham.

To go with the main course was a light Rose Kabinett 2009 and a Rotwein Cuvee 2009. With the theme being Oktoberfest, I chose the specially organised imported Grilled Bratwurst and Nuremburg sausages for my main course. From the raves around my table, I should have perhaps chosen the fish in beurre noisette sauce instead. The sausages being bland were not at all complimented by the rather watery Rose though the Rotwein and the two German wine princesses from Franconia (Franken) in their “dirndl’s” somewhat retrieved the situation.

Sevilla is one of the hidden gems on the New Delhi food circuit. Its greatest asset is its ambience –how many up-market restaurants provide the option of dining in a beautifully lit open air area crisscrossed by water streams and bridges and under the shadow of some hundred year old trees? Though it has gone through many identity iterations, Sevilla has now settled on a pan Mediterranean positioning to bring in the diners.

 Despite this, Corporate Chef Ravi Saxena and his Sous Chef, Rahul Srivastava acceded to our request for keeping the Oktoberfest theme in mind. They took on the challenge of pairing the Graf von Schönborn wines with some typical German fare --and very successfully too. Our thanks also go to Roopak, the restaurant manager who oversaw the smooth table service and saw us leave with memories of a very congenial evening.

The Delhi Wine Club wishes its members a Happy Oktoberfest!

Arun Batra

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