Hotel Trident in Gurgaon has come out with an interesting concept of wine tasting with ten wines available to drink in unlimited quantity with the Sunday Brunch, reports Subhash Arora.

I was pleasantly surprised last Sunday when I walked into the Oberoi group’s Trident Hotel in Gurgaon for a quick bite with 3 other friends at the Cilantro Restaurant. They had laid out a superb buffet which was hard to resist. It was later that I learnt when the check was presented that  I had found it had cost only Rs.9980 for the 4 of us. This included starters in different sections, like dim sums, sushi, kebabs, pizzas and scores of other mouth watering delicacies and a huge spread of desserts which were pure temptation to pump heavenly calories into the system.

For those who might not want to experiment with all the multicuisine, mouth-watering  starters, there were plenty of main course dishes too!!

At Rs.2500 a head, it is a great price for a buffet, especially when you go to the main item in the Menu-unlimited quantity of 10 wines you can taste and drink and enjoy the food with- and do your own endless food-wine pairing! The brochure said- a selection of ten new World Wines. Although I’d question the bias for the New World, in fact they were serving from both the Worlds as is obvious from the Menu below:

White Wines:

Red Wines:

The biggest benefit of an event like this is to enable one to taste all the 10 labels first so you can rate them in your own mind. You may find some are not acceptable to palate and a couple of wines or the vintages may be over the top as I discovered with Spazieri- which was long dead and gone- and couple of other wines.

But I recommend you taste all 10 of them, even if you don’t like to drink red or white wine, and avail of the tasting opportunity offered by this concept. Another point to ponder is that most such wines will not be of top quality- and cannot be. One should be wary of the older vintages and should not be misled that all older vintages a re necessarily better matured and balanced. At the same time, there could be pleasant surprises too. The Valpolicella from the Verona-based Masi was seemingly passed its prime-so was the Beaujolais. But both passed the muster for flavour and food match..

The Prices above are indicative retail prices in the US, UK and have been taken from the Wine-searcher.com and reflect average prices. They are extrapolated for the years not shown in the search sight- a couple of the vintages are too far gone to be alive or selling. I have given star ratings for wines on a scale of 1-5 keeping in view the price range of the wine. A couple of wines did not even have the prices on the menu.

The Cilantro at Trident Gurgaon is worth a family outing on a lazy Sunday- for wine tasting. Great food, plenty of wines, relaxing ambience and the typical Oberoi service are a bonus.

Recommended Value-for Money wine

If you are having dinner in the restaurant and would want one great value for money red wine in the restaurant, it has to be the Clos Vougeot Grand Cru from Louis Jadot. It is the top level Burgundy wine and the vintage 2001 means it is ready to drink. It is extremely well-priced at Rs.5500. I found it perhaps the best vfm wine in their whole Menu. I presume it has been stored properly during the years.

The future has even better wine tasting opportunities at The Trident.Prashant Gupta, the F * B manager says, ' when our restaurant in the adjoining wing opens up, we plan to have 10 Champagnes in the Brunch.' Very impressive-and we shall say Cheers to the wonderful idea. Meanwhile, for reservations call +91 0124 245 0505

Subhash Arora

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