No Bull Just Wine ? Indian Accent Bar in Delhi

The name Charles Metcalfe will ring a bell for anyone acquainted with Delhi. A master of oriental languages, he took charge of the Mughal capital under the East India Company in 1811. He was an opulent character who behaved like Mughal satrap, but the Charles Metcalfe I met at Indian Accents, Rohit new Restaurant in Delhi tony neighbourhoods, was anything but posh. A gifted wine writer and speaker with a charming wife (Kathryn is also his writing better half). Charles can claim credit for liberating Indian food in Britain from the tag of being appropriate only for lager louts. Wine sophisticates scorned Indian cuisine, but Charles, with his spot-on pairing suggestions for Chor Bizarre restaurant in Mayfair, brought wine bar in delhi, culture to Indian restaurants.

Charles paired the wines with the menu and reminded us that no one wine could suit Indian cuisine, an idea that seems lost on other wine writers. As with any other cuisine, you select a wine to go with a particular dish only after you’ve checked out how it has been cooked. A wine that goes with a yoghurt based dish may not work with a preparation where the main spice is zeera or saunf. With Indian cuisine, what work best are fruit forward, slightly dry whites (like a Riesling or a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, which goes great with that evening’s bharwan mirch packed with goat cheese mousse and chili aam papad chutney).

Red wines are tricky, especially if the tannins haven’t softened up-they accentuate the chilli, which is not a very comfortable feeling, but a young Tempranillo from Spain or an Australian Shiraz, like the one that simply danced with the Tamarind glazed lamb shank we had for dinner, can add lots of excitement to any Indian meal.

Charles and Kathryn have written extensively on wine, food and travel in Spain and Portugal. If only they would travel the curry route across India pairing wines along the way. I may have set them on this journey when I urged them to ditch Karim’s and check out the seekh Kebabs an mutton korma at neighbouring Al-Jawahar. I wonder which wines will go with them. This is written by Sourish Bhattacharya is Executive Editor, Mail Today.