Soul Tree Wines

Issue 5
February 2011 | Soul Tree Wines | www.soultreewine.co.uk
Soul Tree Wines
Your Window into our Soul
New Year. Old Resolutions.
Except one resolution that we are happy to break: we had resolved to
bring you this newsletter every quarter. Instead, it will now be coming to
you every other month, rather than every quarter. Hurrah!
Other than that, we continue with our efforts to make Soul Tree the presence it is destined to become! Everything’s just bigger, brighter, and better. We continue to make new friends, to get listed at new restaurants,
and to explore other frontiers. In January Director Magazine listed Soul
Tree as one of the UK’s Hot 20 businesses to watch in 2011. Business at
Oxford Magazine, in its Summer 2011 edition, has run a feature on Soul
Tree titled ‘Wines that Curry Favour’ (now how’s that for the headline of
an article celebrating Indian wine?).
Meanwhile Soul Tree, the wine, has been spreading its wings and learning to fly. It is now listed in several restaurants in London, Oxford, and
across various towns in Surrey. We absolutely love the feedback that
has been coming our way - it only helps steel our resolve to work even
harder at bringing Soul Tree to an even wider audience!
The Indus Entrepreneurs, perhaps better known as just TiE, have been an
invaluable source of support, as have the alumni department of Oxford’s
Saïd Business School. It’s great to know, while one’s plodding away at the
day’s challenges, that one has great friends ready to step in with help,
assistance, advice, or even just a kind word.
Here’s to great friends and an invaluable support network.
Cheers!
Contents
New Year. Old Resolutions.
1
The Hot List:
20 Businesses to Watch in 2011 2
Exploring Further Afield
2
Did You Know?
3
Nasik Valley – the
Birthplace of Soul Tree
3
Pairing Wine with Spicy
Cuisine
4
The Hot List: 20 Businesses to Watch in 2011
The potential demonstrated by Soul Tree saw it being recognised by Director
Magazine (published by the Institute of Directors) as one of the Hot 20 businesses to watch in 2011.
Despite entering a highly competitive industry in a time of recession and with
an unknown brand and product category, Soul Tree is on its way to becoming
a force to reckon with. There’s a long way to go yet, but we are looking forward to the challenge and to the company and support of friends and wellwishers along the way.
We at Soul Tree at very proud at this early distinction and are resolved to seeing Soul Tree rise to the challenge!
Soul Tree is now available in Oxford - where the idea for Soul Tree germinated!
Exploring Further Afield
What do the City of London, the commuter suburbs of Surrey, and Oxfordshire
have in common? Astute businessmen running Indian restaurants who so cannily and equally instinctively grasp the role a great Indian wine like Soul Tree
can play in their own businesses. After all dining out is such an experiential
thing that no one factor on its own is enough: sumptuous food needs to be
paired with not just the right ambience and great service, but with the hitherto missing link in Indian cuisine - Indian wine.
In these hard economic times people have been dining out less than before
and when they do dine out they are spending less too. Sales of the cheaper
house wines have gone up at the expense of the better, more expensive
wines. Yet consumers wanting to complete the Indian dining experience appreciate a great Indian wine and restaurants are only too pleased to accommodate!
Soul Tree started its romance with the UK in the Midlands, but is now looking very keenly at London and the South East, and is also redoubling efforts in
Leicestershire and Warwickshire, aiming to ensure that there is no part of the
country where consumers of Indian cuisine are deprived of a fanstastic Indian
wine. By the time this went to press Soul Tree was listed in over 70 restaurants
across 23 different towns and cities in the UK!
The first curry house in the UK was the Hindostanee Coffee House,
founded in 1809 in London!
India has more English speakers than the UK!
London has more Indian restaurants than Mumbai & Delhi put
together!
Bombay Duck is not a duck but another name, in
India, for the lizardfish!
Did
You
Know ?
Phall is a British-Indian dish hot enough to blow your
socks off! It’s so hot most restaurants won’t even list it.
And it was invented in the UK!
The slightly sweet, off-dry style Soul Tree Chenin Blanc is proving as popular as the
Zinfandel. Surprised?
Nasik - the Birthplace of Soul Tree
(continued from the previous edition)
In the previous edition I had mentioned the remarkable feeling of quietude,
bordering on tranquility, when I entered Nasik for the first time. Perhaps the
benchmark was all wrong. When in India I was living in New Delhi, which is
far from quiet! Even on my way to Nasik I had first flown into Mumbai - and
far be it than for me to try and explain the sheer chaos that is Mumbai! It’s all
relative, I guess. That established, Nasik, for me, still had that old city feel to
it. And I loved every moment of it!
It’s hard for me to imagine any part of urban India that could even remotely
be mentioned along with the words quietude and tranquility. But when we
drove around at around 11pm after a fantastic meal at a popular restaurant I
thought a curfew had been announced! We drove to the banks of the Godavari river and stopped on a bridge, swigging beer from cans as I soaked in the
sounds of the river flowing underneath and of the animals that inhabited the
banks, and the lights of night-time Nasik around me.
The next morning saw us waking up early and driving to the Pandav Leni
caves, examples of intricate carving and craftsmanship carved into the mountainside. As it turns out an early-morning climb is a popular activity, with
hoardes of men, women and children climbing the mountainside to get to
the caves, and beyond to the peak. Climbing the near-vertical, slippery, rocky
mountainside I realised I hadn’t felt so unfit in a long time, while women and
children seemed to be negotiating the mountain with relative ease!
(to be continued…)
Pairing Wine with Spicy Food
This has always been something of a challenge, especially due to the complexity of the ingredients and the flavours in Indian sub-continental cuisine. Of
course it did not help that wines have evolved over the centuries in Europe,
and have understandably evolved to pair well with European cuisine.
So the next time you are grabbing a curry and feel like a wine to go with it,
remember these 5 simple rules:
Choose an elegant wine with few key flavors Spicy cuisine can overwhelm
the palate & a big, strong, complex wine competes with, rather than complements, the flavours. It is best to select a simple wine that delivers few key
flavours in sufficient volume.
Choose a wine with low alcohol content Wines with a high alcohol content
can accentuate the heat of spicy cuisine.
Try a lighter bodied wine Tannins are known to dry the palate - the dried
palate intensifies the heat in a spicy meal while reducing the enjoyment of the
wine.
Avoid the Oak if possible Over oaked wines could unnecessarily add extra
tannins bringing a chewy sensation to the experience of eating.
Try some sweetness to balance the heat This is probably one of the most
important rules as a touch of residual sugar in the wine will calm the heat of
spicy cuisine and make it more enjoyable.
Soul Tree Wines
Ignisis Limited
alok.mathur@soultreewine.co.uk
www.soultreewine.co.uk
SoulTreeWine
@SoulTreeWine
Fax: +44 2476 10 10 20
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We have great things planned for Soul Tree, and are glad for your company
along the way. Together, we can make it happen!
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