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ShareWhat's in a name? No, really? A wine doesn't sound as much of a luxury by itself. The price sure makes it seem so. Well, partly because of the quality of liquid but most of it is for the journey it makes from the vines to our table and all the greasy-handed profiteers involved in-between.
So what could be that one last step that could valorise the wine as we pay prices that seem to flatten our accounts to a size zero? It is service. Wine in India is never sold, it is usually bought. Most of us go to a hotel already sure that today we want to torture ourselves by throwing away some of our own hard-earned money on a horribly
inappropriately priced wine. It would seem an ancient masochistic traditional way, one would think, of celebrating a special day. But if the service is par-excellence we have less to crib about.
A case in point would be the Snake Coffee at the Zodiac Grill. For those of you who know, you may be nodding in agreement already.
That evening I was in no mood for coffee. It was quite late, I had an early start, and to acquire a buzz would have been the least sensible of ideas. The coffee itself is nothing special. Simply described, it is coffee with cognac, over which some flambéed Grand Marnier is poured down the spiral of a sweet lime skin. As the flaming blue liquid slides its way down the curving lime-skin there is something hypnotically enchanting about it. Finally it is topped with sweetened whipped cream and Tia Maria.
Okay, so that sounds exotic. But what made this drink special for me is the man who stands behind the Gueridon. Domnic has the lovely conversational capacity to casually continue with the creation as he coolly concocts a story around the snake coffee. And then it was all poured into a carefully garnished balloon. To begin with, I wasn't keen on coffee, let alone some Gueridon display which today, in most places, is executed with slightly more panache than cheap circus tricks. But after a long time I had seen a refreshing and class act. In fact, by the time he finished, I was well dying to get my lips wet on this treat.
Another such performance which made the product even more desirable than it actually could be was the making of the Degree Coffee (which I call the One-yard or one-metre coffee). This was at the Southern Spice restaurant in Chennai and the sense of precision required to make this coffee is truly a feat. People practise with hot water, pouring it from the steel glass into the little steel bowl, from a height as stunning as their handspan; well more than a metre.
My complaint is that nobody puts in half as much effort trying to serve or sell wine. Stewards are little more than transport boys, bussing the wine from the cellar to the table, opening it and then meekly waiting for us to either accept it or else tell them that it's off. Why can't this change? Why can't some hotels concentrate on the soft skill aspect as much as they do on acquiring another 100 new labels to adorn their list? Serve us wine please, we deserve more than a shoddy show. And then, perhaps nobody will object to your ridiculous margins and beyond fantasy pricing strategies if at least you tell us a good fairy tale as you rob us in broad candlelight...
The writer is a sommelier.
