Hyderabad: The first time that wine connoisseur, Uma Chigurupati tasted wine was after her marriage. She was baffled with the tiny winery set up in her new home. Her husband, Prasad Kumar, had turned into a wine enthusiast at an early age after he tasted his first red wine, one made at the Vatican.
The two have come a long way from the one-room winery, to launching their own wines that won the gold and silver medals at the San Francisco International Wine Competition, 2014. The victory also made Krsma Estate Wines, a company they started together, the first Indian winery to win medallions in any US wine competition. Currently, they have launched their brand in Bengaluru and are heading to New York to launch it there before Christmas.
Though Uma didn’t have an immediate liking to wine, the taste, however, slowly grew on her and before she knew it, she had turned into a wine taster on their 170 acre estate near Hampi. “My husband always wanted to open a winery, in either South of France or in Spain, but when we came across this piece of land, which was in the middle of nowhere, we knew at once that this was where we would make our wine.
We called upon Peter Heyes, a grape-growing and vineyard management mentor from Australia,” says Uma, whose background in plant pathology and soil microbiology came in handy when the two established their estate in 2007. Their love for wines runs so deep in their veins that, even their holidays are planned where they can have a sip of some excellent wines. “Every time we travel, we pick up bottles of exquisite wines and we have visited most of the wineries across the globe. Our current favourite wines are the ones that come from Napa Valley,” says Uma, who though based out of Hyderabad, lives mostly in Hampi.
Incidentally, wine isn’t their only passion, for this couple loves running too. They have finished running full marathons in all seven continents over the past eight months and it all started thanks to their thirst for good wines. “Our first full marathon was the one in Medoc, the Bordeaux region. It was 42 kilometres of sheer carnival. More than water, we were being offered wine to wet our parched throats,” recalls Uma. Then, the two ran across Mongolia at the Sunrise to Sunset Run, then at the North Pole, Antarctica, at -32 degrees and also finished the Australian Outback Run.
