How a Riesling Transported Me to India

What is your “it” wine?

Wine professionals often ask this of each other. It simply means, which wine made you take the plunge, knowing you wanted to discover more? Often the answer comes with stories of how the wine made you feel rather than what it tasted like. 

My “it” wine took me to India.

It was a 2010 F.X. Pichler Riesling Smaragd, Loibner Loibenberg from Wachau, Austria. 

It was my first time having an aged Riesling. On first pour, you could see its honeyed color, the heavier body clinging to the glass. I’d never seen anything like it. Then came the swirl and sniff. One dip of the nose, and you could pick up honey, maple, bruised pear, lemon skin, honeydew melon, wilting florals and that classic petrol scent that only develops with age. 

As the wine stretched and yawned in my glass, it evolved. I smelled, I took notes, scratching at the paper as I couldn’t pinpoint one distinct fruit hiding behind the others. The scent evoked a dusty memory. 

F.X. Pichler Loibner Steinertal Riesling Smaragd — Image Courtesy of Vivino

I catapulted to the Himalayas, where my family spent most of our Indian summers. Eureka! I’d found the scent—it smelled like the Himalayan fruit we so often picked from trees. The chikoo (known as sapodilla in English) is a brown, fuzzy-haired fruit with a caramelized stone fruit flavor, a grainy texture and black seeds. It tastes like maple and brown sugar, with a distinct umami undertone, and is usually served peeled and cut into wedges.

As a kid, I never liked chikoo. The grownups always insisted we eat them before my brother and I could go play. The scent of the fruit was embedded in my mind, as a memory of hurried bites, sticky fingers from fishing out the seeds from our mouths, crisp mountain air and an urgency to assemble for cricket or badminton with my cousins.

If we finished our helpings of chikoo, we were allowed freedom. So, we inhaled them, reluctantly and quickly.

Chikoo on a wood table top — Chikoo Fruit – Getty Images

India is not known for wine. I didn’t grow up with wine as a part of the dinner table. Women consuming alcohol, gasp was unheard of. Wine was simply not around, even with the grownups. And yet, a wine from a different side of the world linked me to my homeland. 

I was introduced to wine in the United States. It wasn’t at a high school party or college hang. I was a goody-two-shoes and had my first glass of wine with my mother on my 21st birthday at a matinee show for a play. It was a sparkling rosé. I liked it because it was pink. 

Even though wine wasn’t part of my vocabulary (yet), my mother played an important role in developing my palate.

Growing up, she would serve my brother and me dinner and ask us to list every ingredient in the dish. I would rattle off ingredients like onions, garlic, tomatoes and ginger. Easy points. Then, we would dissect the harder ones: cardamom, cumin, fenugreek. 

“Is there sugar in this paneer?” my brother would ask. “Yes, just a dash,” my mother would say proudly, noting it was her secret ingredient.

Henna Bakshi's mother, Simaran Bakshi, cooking bhature (a fried, fermented bread) at their family home on Diwali. 2023 - Image Courtesy of Henna Bakshi

An active kitchen was always the beating heart of the family, pumping out one flavorful dish after the next. So, when I discovered wine, it was flavor I latched on to. The layers made sense, as cooking does. The progression from field to bottle was akin to selecting ingredients for a recipe. I understood that the grape evolves, like the way an onion does when sauteed in butter. Oak aging after fermentation adds depth and softness to a wine, much like homemade Indian pickles soften when you leave them in the sun. Or how the right wine can sing when paired correctly, just as a side of yogurt with daal is a match for the gods.

Emotions and loving memories are universal. Food and wine can unlock this nostalgia. We hosted countless dinners at the house, where my mother orchestrated endless spreads of curries, rotis and rice puddings. She, so unabashedly, shared our cuisine that my friends would beg to come over if my mother was making samosas. Food allowed us to connect and flourish. 

Wine, though, was never meant to feel like my own, mostly because it wasn’t a part of my culture. Coming to the U.S. didn’t feel like my own at first either.

An archival family photo from Henna Bakshi — Henna Bakshi at age 6 (center) with her brother, Aakash Bakshi to the right and cousin, Apoorv Saini, to the left at their family home eating homemade evening treats before they could go play. 1998 - Image Courtesy of Henna Bakshi

As my family and I integrated and started building new memories, linking learned behaviors to new societal rules, we started fitting in. I went to high school and college in Florida, flawlessly picking up an American accent from all the years of watching the Disney channel. I married my college sweetheart and worked as a journalist, reporting on American news, as though I’d been a local all my life. More than fitting in, I started to belong.

That night in my Atlanta home, the Riesling was my Proustian madeleine. I could finally link wine, not just to the bookish terms I was memorizing, but to a synapse of memory that happens so often with food. Memories can make you feel like you belong, and that you’re correct in your feeling. 

Henna Bakshi Portrait — Image Courtesy of Henna Bakshi

I host dinners often. It seems instinctual, watching the curries simmer on the stove and listening to the crackle of meat roasting in the oven, as the fridge hungrily waits for my wine selections. I’m forever recreating the magic my mother taught me, and adding an element of wine, which feels like natural ascension to American adulthood. 

I find myself pouring our guests beautiful bottles. A gran reserva Cava perhaps, or a white Port, something fun. We swirl and sniff our glasses together before I ask them to list what they smell.

“Is there a touch of sugar in this wine?”

For a moment in time, it all feels connected.