Indian Wine – Who would have thought?

We somehow ended back at our new favorite restaurant in King George tonight.  The Bollywood Marsala Restaurant is a very good Indian restaurant.  The food is excellent and the owner and his wife are very friendly and helpful.

            We started the meal with Vegetable Pakora.  This is a variety of vegetables dipped in a batter and deep fried.  This was a great way to start out the dinner … unfortunately, we got so excited about the appitizers, we forgot to take a picture (just use your imagination).

            The main course consisted of 3 different entries.  Sally got her usual Chicken Bryani (Chicken with rice, nuts, herbs, and Indian spices), I got Lamb Tikka Massala (Lamb with onion sauce and Indian spices), and we split Channa Pindi (Chick Peas cooked in herbs and spices).   All of these were great!!  Of course we also had to include some Naan.

            One of the challenges was to select the “proper” wine to pair with this great meal.  No problem, following my rule of paring wine and food from the same area, we decided to try out the Indian wine on their menu.  This was a 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon, a Narayangaon Estate Reserve from Sahyadri Valley, Maharashtra in India.  According to the bottle “India has long been know as a producer of fine wines from vineyards on the upper slope of the Sahyadri Valley in Western Maharashtra, where it has a history of producing famous wines for Courts of Kings and Emperors of India”.  Although I can’t verify these facts (in fact I didn’t even realize India made wine), I can say that the wine was full bodied and complimented the spicy food.  Not a bad pairing and the price of $20 was certainly reasonable.

We finished off the meal with Gulab Jamun (light milk pastry balls in a sugar syrup) and Masala (Chai) Tea.  I can’t say that I am a fan of this dessert.  The pastry balls were mushy and the syrup was VERY VERY sweet.  Other than the dessert, everything was delicious.  We were worried about getting into a rut again … no problem Raj (the owner and chef) volunteered to fix us up with something special next time based on our preferences.  Now I am looking forward to the next visit as well as getting home to a proper dessert of chocolate.