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International
Herald Tribune |
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Ask the wine waiter for vintage Bali rosé
Michael Richardson International Herald Tribune SANUR, Indonesia
-- Ida
Bagus Rai Budarsa was dressed in traditional ceremonial
clothing - a white cap and long-sleeved cotton shirt, a golden
sarong, and sandals. He was on his way to attend the rites for
the renovation of his family temple, a duty of all Balinese
who practice a form of the Hindu religion.
But first, he wanted to talk to a visitor about his unusual
business-making wine from table grapes in Bali, a tropical island
more often associated with an exotic blend of culture, crafts
and scenic beauty than the gifts of Bacchus.
Still, Rai
Budarsa's family had been making Balinese rice wine for
may years when he went off to the neighboring Indonesian island
of Java to major in food processing at Brawijaya University
in Malang. Besides being an alcoholic beverage enjoyed by the
Balinese, rice wine is a requirement for many of the island's
Hindu ceremonies.
After completing his studies, Rai
Budarsa returned to Bali and took over the operations of
the family-owned company, Brem Bali Dewi Sri, which is named
after the rice goddess Dewi Sri. With the island becoming a
magnet for hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists each year,
he first started to think about making wine from local grapes
in 1992.
"I saw that grapes were being grown near Singaraja on the north
coast of Bali," he said. "Yet all our wine was imported, not
made in Bali." Wine imported into Indonesia, a predominantly
Muslim country, attracts a 300 percent government tax, which
makes it expensive. Clearly, there was abusiness opportunity
for making an all-Balinese wine from locally grown and harvested
grapes - a product that would not be liable to the heavy import
tax.
The opportunity materialized in 1994 when Rai
Budarsa started another family company, PT Hatten Bali,
and a French winemaker, Vincent
Desplat, who had extensive experience making wine in France
and Australia, came to Bali to join the firm.
"It is not everyday that a winemaker has the opportunity to
start a winery and create wine for the first time in a place
that has never before made it in commercial amounts," Desplat
explained.
There was another challenge. The three local grape varieties
he would have to rely on were obscure vines that had traditionally
been used to produce table grapes for eating, not pressing and
fermenting into wine. When the Hatten vineyard on the hot and
arid coastal region of northern Bali tried growing chardonnay
and other temperate climate vines, they did not fruit. The local
grapes are grown using pergolas,
an overhead trellis system That can be found in the vineyards
of Spain and Sicily. The posts consist of Small pruned trees
that are joined at the top by a wire grid. The vines are Trained
along the wires, forming an overhead canopy that keeps the vineyard
Workers cool and reduces the risk of disease and sunburn on
the grapes. The Professor of viticulture and oenology in France
who had taught Desplat
told him bluntly that it would be impossible to make good red
or rosé wine from the Alfonso
black table grape that is grown in Bali or white wine from
the two local grapes, the Belgia and the Probolingo Biru - both
of which bear Muscat-tasting fruit. How wrong the professor
was. Desplat
now makes eight types of wine - rosé,
red and white and two sparkling wines. All are expertly crafted,
light and best served chilled to complement Bali's warm climate,
spicy food and al fresco dining. Later this month, the first
exports of Hatten's rose wine will be shipped to Europe. Maryse
LaRocque, the company's sales and marketing manager, said that
exports are also planned to Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand
in response to requests from people from those countries who
have visited Bali and liked the wine.
Meanwhile Desplat
is preparing to make his 117th "vintage" in eight years. Unlike
temperate winemaking regions where there is just one annual
harvest of the grapes, the tropical climate of Bali enables
the evergreen vines to yield up to three crops per year.
As a result, wine can be produced virtually all year long. "The
wine of Bali is made to be drunk and enjoyed, not put in a cellar,"
Desplat
said.
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Tunjung
- General Information & Tasting Notes |
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On May 10th 2002 at the Bali Inter-Continental Hotel, the Balinese
winery once again surprised the Bali guests with 3 new white
wines. For this 'all white' event, Hatten Wines introduced the
'jewel of it's crown', Tunjung, a
white sparkling 'méthode traditionnelle'. This one year
old, very limited edition, has already been praised by the hoteliers
of Bali. This latest creation by winemaker Vincent
Desplat won its 'Best of Bali 2002' Award at an objective
blind tasting by a team of French Someliers, Served at the VVIP
cocktail for the Ministerial meeting of the 2002 United Nations
"Prep-Comm" on the Global Environmental Issues and Sustainable
Development, Tunjung is almost all
reserved or sold out for this first vintage.
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