Heritage Winery - Wine and Dine

My friends and I decided to explore something new every month in January 2014. So far all we were able to do was to cover a lot of restaurants in various parts of Bangalore. We tried something different last week when we did the Madhugiri Trek. This week we decided to take a road trip to Mysore road and visit the Heritage Winery. To reach this place you can drive upto Chanappatna that is around 50kms from Kengeri. Once you pass Chanappatna keep an eye out for the signboards on the left.

Heritage winery has an educational tour which explains how wine gets prepared from the grapes. The tour costs Rs 150 and it starts with a short video introduction about the classification of wine and what kind of grapes is used for different types of wine. It was interesting to know that wine has about 12% of natural alcohol and 4% of alcohol is added to give it the right taste. Sweeteners are added to give it a particular taste. 

Once the video is over you get to walk to the winery. We went on a Sunday, so it was not operational. The guide there told us that if we had visited any other day we could see the crushing of grapes and the bottling of wine. This entire tour takes around 40mins. Then comes the interesting part. Wine tasting and wine drinking etiquette :D

The guide will explain to you how to smell, taste and then drink the wine. Yes, you need to do it right. In most movies the wine glasses are held with the index and middle finger, which is actually wrong. Wine glasses should be held with the thumb and the index finger. With each serving of wine the guide will let you know what kind of food goes with the wine and will explain how having wine in the right proportion is very good for health. Below I will try to write in short about whatever I remember. 

This winery prepares 5 types of wines. I will be numbering the wine based on how I liked the taste of the wines. 1 being - 'I love it' to 5 being - 'Give me a paper bag, I might puke' (Just kidding, I sort off liked all)

1) Heritage Red Wine - Also known as the dessert wine. It is the sweetest wine you can have but it contains 16% alcohol. This is good after a meal and before desserts. 

2) Heritage Twist bubbly wine - This comes in a bottle and from outside it looks like beer. It tastes like the appy grape fizz but not so tasty. This goes with any food.

3) Heritage Chiraz is a red wine. It is a kind of sweet wine but not so sweet also. You get more of the foul taste ( sorry for the choice of words ) but with a hint of sweetness as it goes down your throat.

4) Heritage Chenin Blanc is a white sparkling wine. This is the only white wine this winery produces. This is like champagne. This wine goes with white meat or for vegetarians the not so spicy food. 

5) Heritage Cabernet is red wine and there is no sweetness in this. This seems to have the maximum percentage of alcohol which is around 16-18%. This wine goes well with the red meat and for vegetarians the spicy food.

Once you are done tasting all these wines you can goto the Epulo restaurant in the campus to order wine of your choice and have a nice meal with it. You can tell the waiter the choice of wine and he can help you pick the food items. Below are the pics of the food we all had. 

Chilli Toast

Potato and Cheese croquette

Cheers!

Grilled Malai Chicken

Pasta Salad

 Chicken A La King

 Hot Chocolate Fudge

There is a nice lawn where you can sit and relax after your meal. If you have more than 2 glasses of wine then avoid driving because we were told that wine is slow and you will feel high around 30mins after you have the wine. On the way back you can shop for toys for chanappatna, visit the sholay spot in Ramnagar or stop for a coffee in any of the coffee days. This trip was the first time we took a friends car and not a bike. Which was good because it rained really heavily that evening. 

This place is out of the city and can be an awesome day outing with friends or family. 60kms roadtrip followed by a nice wine and dine experience which will cost you around 500 per person including the wine.

I am planning to visit more places by end of 2014 and will be blogging about them all. Please click "Join this site" on the side bar to subscribe to my blog. You can read more about my trips here -> http://www.gshny.in/search/label/travel

My partners in crime :)