GranMonte's grapes-in-bud club
The winery's annual Harvest Festival mixes the delectable with the hilarious
A bit cheekily, GranMonte Vineyard and Winery recently opened its doors to enthusiasts for “Pick of the Season”, its annual two-day harvest festival – and got everyone to pick its grapes for it.
It was all part of the amusement, of course, along with seeing who was best at guzzling wine from a Spanish porron decanter without too much embarrassing spillage.
Visooth and Sakuna Lohitnavy established the 100-rai winery in the Asoke Valley next to Khao Yai National Park in 1999 and began producing wine two years later. In 2009 their daughter Nikki emerged from Australia’s University of Adelaide with a degree in viticulture and took over operations, importing equipment from Oz and Europe and boosting capacity to 120,000 bottles a year.
They’re in a valley but still 350 metres above sea level, so the climate is made for growing grapes – Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Grenache, Durif, Chenin Blanc, Verdelho, Semillon, Viognier, Muscat, Thompson, Perlette and Maroo.
A decade ago Visooth started the harvest-festival tradition and visitors flock in from the capital to tour the vineyard, wine cellar and souvenir shop, dine in the 120-seat restaurant Vin Cotto and often to stay in the comfortable guesthouse.
Traditional dancing of the Northeast opened this year’s festival as guests tucked into Western-Isaan fusion dishes. Musicians Jirapan Angsawanond, the Blue Sapphires, Pansuang Chumsai na Ayutthaya, Jitjaroon Niyomsiri, Sukhum Limpichart and Chotirot Wiboonlap took turns performing onstage.
The next morning was devoted to games. There were enough people to form 21 teams, which competed at drinking wine from the awkward-for-rookies Spanish porron, grasping a ball with chopsticks and, of course, picking grapes.
Team Baan Khanitha (Anan Songlang and Jesada Martud) somehow managed to scoop up 56 kilograms of grapes in 30 minutes and for their efforts received a huge case of GranMonte wines, a bottle of 2009 Orient Syrah Reserve Magnum and two bottles of 2013 Voignier, total value Bt30,000.
As a consolation prize, everyone else was present for the opening of the winery’s latest editions, 2013 GrandMonte Cremant Chenin Blanc and 2013 Sakuna Syrah Rose, which recently won the Blue Gold Award in the Sydney International Wine Competition.
