by Dr. Iain
Corness
One
of Thailand’s international wine judges and the president of the Royal
Cliff Wine Club is Ranjith Chandrasiri, an oenophile (wine connoisseur). A
man who admits that his first drink was furtive. “I started early -
smoking, drinking and cutting school, but I never went to the extreme,”
he assured me with a smile.
In those days, young Ranjith lived with his parents in
Sri Lanka, and fortunately for him, his parents could see his potential,
despite the smoking and truancy, and sent him to Germany to a school of
hotel management, as his first professed interest was in food and wine.
“I wanted to be a chef,” said our wine man.
So at 15 years of age he began his five year
apprenticeship. When allowed near the kitchen on his own, he fancied
himself cooking everything with wine, and undoubtedly at an age when he
was not allowed to drink in pubs, he was able to sample the sherries in
the kitchen.
However, it soon became apparent that Ranjith’s
interest was much more than teenage tippling. By the time he was 18 years
old he had begun to look at specialized wine training. “I had a good
palate at the time,” he said. He was also working part-time in
restaurants at night, where his knowledge of wines was starting to pay
off, and many diners would leave a little in the bottle for their wine
waiter to experience. He kept notes on the various wines, and still has
those notes to this day. One of his catch-cries to his students over the
years has been, “Write it down, jot it down. You will appreciate that
wine many years later.”
His interest continued, and by the time he was 21 years
old (and drinking legally) he was making contact with the winemakers of
the world. Every two months he would go to France or Italy to meet the
people behind the wine labels. “This was a little unusual, me being
Asian and looking different,” he admitted.
By now he knew that his future was not with pots and
pans and cooking sherry and he transferred over to the service side of the
hospitality industry. He also continued with his wine studies, heading
inexorably towards the designation of ‘sommelier’, a person who truly
understands about wines. “The sommelier has to know (amongst much other
information) the temperatures for serving wine, its storage and what wine
goes with which food. In those days, the sommelier tasted the wine first,
but these days the guest generally does the tasting,” said Ranjith. I
detected a note of sadness and even disagreement with the current trend.
This was not just because of wine samplings lost, but because Ranjith
believes implicitly that training of the wine drinker’s palate should
begin early. “They should be trained a very young age. This is to train
the palate. It is possible to get wine judges that are very young (when
they start early enough). I have made 10-15 people under the age of 30
into wine judges,” he said with an obvious pride.
However, returning to his own training, he followed his
nose, and the wine bouquet, through many diverse countries, even to the
“New World” in wine-speak, completing a diploma course in Wine
Knowledge and Sensory Evaluation from the University of Adelaide. By this
stage, he has been to every wine growing country in the world, other than
Georgia. A visit there is on his list of places to see, “I just want to
see the Russian way of making it,” he said as way of explanation, as he
has tasted Georgian wines.
In fact, Ranjith has tasted just about all of the
world’s great wines. “I have no ambition to drink any particular wine.
I have tried them all,” he said simply, without any boasting.
Of course, someone like Ranjith Chandrasiri has to have
his own personal cellar (as opposed to the award winning Royal Cliff Grill
Room cellar) and when in Australia had a cellar with around 6,000 bottles.
This is not extravagance, as far as our wine buff is concerned, as a well
planned cellar is better than money in the bank. “When you know what to
buy, it’s like buying gold. It never goes down. But if it does - you
drink it!”
I admitted to Ranjith that all my (many) attempts at
laying down a wine cellar have ended in failure. Six bottles appears to be
my maximum, not 6,000. “To keep a wine cellar you have to control the
temptation. If you get a 2,000 vintage Bordeaux it will be nice today, but
even better in five years,” he explained. He did also mention that for
any personal wine cellar you have to control the storage and the
conditions. I can now use that as my excuse - the storage conditions were
not advantageous, so I had to drink the wine to stop it spoiling!
So what is the most expensive wine that has passed over
his palate? Ranjith referred immediately to an 1814 Chateau D’ Yquem.
Yes, you read that correctly - 1814 (by comparison, a 1969 is 36,000 baht)!
What is more, he could refer to his tasting notes, “Original cork. Label
soiled and faded but intact. Top-shoulder level. Medium caramel color with
yellow-green nuances on the rim. Fantastic, pure, rich, full nose of fruit
and caramel, with an almost minty overtone. Unbelievable in the mouth!
Rich, full and round with perfectly balanced, sweet fruit flavors.”
On the other hand, one of the cheapest and most
surprising wines he has drunk was with the world champion sommelier,
Markus del Monego. “It was a ‘Primitivo’. We thought there must have
been a mistake. It was cheaper than some soft drinks!”
Ranjith finds the enthusiasm shown by the local
residents for the Wine Club very gratifying as he believes that wine is a
drink that everyone should appreciate. And what did we drink during the
interview? Soda water. It was a working lunch!
