Weekend Tales, Part One: On The Trail Of Bacchus

We had a rather colorful start to the month this time round with the well timed Holi weekend. Saturday saw us pile into a car with a couple of friends and drive off towards Chateau Indage Vineyards on the trail of Bacchus. The road towards the vineyards is notoriously accident prone or so we were told and the highway we took was liberally peppered with nuggets such as these:
'Safety on road is safe-tea at home!',
'Better to be Mr Late than late Mr!',
'This is Highway not Runway!' and
'Make love not war, but nothing on the road!'.
I was itching to take a couple of snaps but Nikki, having taken it upon herself to declare war on her car seat, was in an exceptionally frolicky mood and not wanting to risk the digicam under the circumstances, I dropped the idea.The wacky road signs resulted in regular fits of giggles as we motored cautiously along and much fun was had by all including Nikki who was chuckling and nodding her head wisely in a 'I'm so totally getting this joke dude!' way.

We reached the vineyards in good time and hurried towards the main desk for the wine tour we had booked earlier during the day, only to be told in curt tones that we were precisely five minutes late, akin to heresy in these parts, and the wine tour thereby stood canceled. Luckily our friend S turned out to be quite the Bond at handling such situations, having had years of experience of dealing with recalcitrant distributors and some chest thumping and this is not done-ing on his part later, the vineyard guys finally agreed to give us the tour. We had an hour to kill before the tour started, and by now the innards were beginning to make their displeasure felt with the occasional gentle growl so we trooped towards the restaurant for lunch. I had read a couple of favorable reviews on the net about the Chateau Indage restaurant and as we looked for a table large enough to accommodate the brood, the gastric juices were beginning to rev up in eager anticipation of the succulent kebabs and melt in your mouth tikkas partaken of by the net reviewers. I paused for a minute to do a quick scan of the items listed on the large, glistening black board that was placed strategically at the entrance of the restaurant.

"Mushroom tikka, hara bhara kebab, dahi...." I read out "that's rather a strange item for today's special don't you think?" I inquired of P. "Dahi? Do you think they have a special kind of dahi here? Specially fed cows perhaps?"
"Err that's not the list for today's special honey" P replied eying the blackboard, "Its the list of what they don't have."
And true enough, a closer inspection of the blackboard revealed "Today NOT available" etched in minutely fine print at the top! Feeling a tad dejected I trudged towards our table, visions of the mushroom tikka quickly turning into dust in my mind's eye, but the menu looked promising enough and I had cheered up by the time a rather depressed looking waiter by the name of Gopal turned up at our table to take the order.

"We'll take the veg kebab platter Gopal" we informed the waiter who promptly began looking like he was on the verge of a having a coronary.
"Too long, too long!" he muttered "It will take forty five minutes Sir! You will miss the wine tour!"
"Oh all right get us the paneer tikka kebabs" we conceded and Gopal smacked his forehead and began wringing his hands despairingly "We are fresh out of paneer Sir! I was just about to put it up on that board there. I swear!"
"Err what about the corn cheese fritters" we asked a tad nervously but that made Gopal look like he was about to burst into tears so we just gave up and asked him to get us whatever he wanted. That seemed to cheer him up significantly and he buzzed off happily while my friend K and I, the two young, oh alright, the two NEW mums in the group got busy with shoveling some food into our respective offspring. Gopal was back by the time we were done with the shoveling, with some food which was just about passable, but we were ravenously hungry by then and attacked it as soon as it landed on our table.

Lunch done, we set off on the first leg of the tour which was at the factory where the grapes were sorted and crushed, post picking. The tour was conducted by an earnest looking chappie who obviously took his day job very seriously and he looked pretty disappointed at our apparent lack of seriousness. "Please do not make the Mary" he said to S in a beseeching tone as he ribbed me and K about something and we proceeded on the rest of the tour with reverential silence, half expecting him to turn around and snap "Finger on the Lips!" if we so much as uttered a peep. I was considering making side notes in my pocket diary to please earnest chappie as we reached the bottle corking machine when we were joined by another family, headed by a beefy looking chappie with a surprisingly girlish voice. This guy was taking the wine tour as seriously as earnest chappie would have wanted anyone to. "Ah the wine corking machine!" he squeaked in an awed tone and proceeded to ask earnest chappie a series of questions about its six sigma certification that would have put even the CP* kings from our b-school days to shame.
* Class Participation, we used to get marks for this. No prizes for guessing who would've aced the score at the wine tour!

Thankfully for the rest of us, that bit of the tour ended soon after and we were escorted to the vineyards where a plump crop of grapes awaited us. The guide showed us a few different types of grapes and then informed us that this year's crop was terribly damaged due to heavy rains around Nasik. Which means that the price of wines in 2011-2012 is expected to skyrocket. He left us with some kind advice on how we would be wise to stock up our cellars and we found ourselves free to roam around in the vineyard, chomping on the occasional luscious grape. Nikki, thoroughly bored by all the non stop lecturing and quiet trooping around in the wine factory was thrilled to be out and about again and was happy to sample a few grapes which she seemed to like. It was a quiet, mellow afternoon with a gentle breeze and the merry chirping of birds and we would have been quite happy to aimlessly loiter around for a bit if it hadn't been for S who suddenly started letting out blood curdling screams and hopping up and down on one foot. Further investigation revealed that overcome with the adventurous spirit, S had ventured further than the rest of us into the vineyards and had managed to disturb a rather busy ant hill. The angry denizens thereof had marched up his trousers in quest of revenge and had finally managed to invade the more sensitive areas of his anatomy, resulting in the afore mentioned hopping and screeching. K and I offered a fervent prayer to the Lord that it hadn't been us with Nikki and A in the line of the ants' ire and ignoring the vile looks S shot at us, we cut short the vineyard excursion and headed back to the Chateau Indage restaurant for the last and most important leg of the tour, the wine tasting.

Which is really the real reason we had driven all the way there of course. That, and the expansion of the mental horizons (yes, yes, Nikki's!) project I have taken on, inspired by Aneela. I mean it was bound to be a learning experience, all those grapes, what? Plus you have the potential for teaching colors- green, purple, red (the ants and S, after he had made his intimate acquaintance with them) and the learning possibilities are enormous!

Anyway, so we got back for the tasting which is full paisa vasool at 150 bucks per head, for 6 glasses (25 ml each, I think it was) of any wine the eye can see on the mind boggling menu and in some time we were perched happily on the bar stools making up toasts and cheers. A happy happy forty five minutes of swirling and sipping later we traipsed back to the cars for the drive back home. I fed Nikki her evening meal just before we hit the road and was congratulating myself on her model behavior all through the day (I am the primary caregiver aren't I? Why should P take any credit?) when she decided the calm before the storm had well and truly passed and started howling lustily. It took me a full forty five minutes of rocking, patting, crooning-till-croaky and attempting-to-feed till I finally figured out she may be thirsty and handed her her sipppy cup. It turned out the poor baby was thirsty after all and after a few large gulps she flung the sippy cup away, curled up in my arms and went to sleep, leaving me free to torment myself with thoughts of what an imperviously imperceptible mother I am.

Thankfully (for P) I was out of my blue funk by the time we got back and after a quick meal of momos, which was all we had place for what with all that wine still jostling around in the insides, we parted ways with our friends and headed back home. Nikki continued to remain blissfully asleep, barely awakening for a quick formula feed and change of clothes, and went right back to sleep when I put her in her cot, nodding her head reassuringly a few times in her sleep as I patted her.

Which brings me to the end of Saturday and I would go right on with recounting what we did on Sunday and Monday, for it was a rather packed weekend this one, except that I seem to have gone on and on and written an exceptionally long winded post, about what was really just a very short day trip. So I'll leave it at that for now and come back later to tell you all about Nikki's first Holi. And on that note, wish you all a very (tad belated) happy Holi and hope you had a great time celebrating!