Sula Shiraz

Winery/Brewery Info

Rajeev Samant began Sula Vineyards in 1997. After graduating from Stanford, he returned home to India with winemaking on his mind, turning his attentions to a family-owned plot of 30 acres in Nashik, India’s most important table-grape growing region. The terroir and climate there were, in fact, ideally suited to growing wine grapes, but nobody had really considered the idea as a viable business proposition. Rajeev teamed up with Kerry Damskey, a leading winemaker from California’s Sonoma Valley, and planted the first vines in 1997. Despite a great deal of initial resistance—the wine business in India was practically nonexistent, and getting a winery license was difficult—Rajeev’s distinctly Californian philosophy of a winery open to the public has sparked a wine revolution, leading to an excellent atmosphere of cooperation between the growing number of wineries in the area.