Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CITY GOVERNMENT (78%); SMUGGLING (74%); SNACK FOODS (71%); STUDENTS & STUDENT LIFE (50%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, NY, USA (93%); BOSTON, MA, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (93%); MASSACHUSETTS, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: June 8, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: The dramas that play out on a single block in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge capture the immigrant experience in both its most troubling and its most inspiring aspects. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES ESTRIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES)(CY1)

(PHOTOGRAPH BY DENNIS W. HO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

(PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES ESTRIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

(PHOTOGRAPH BY DENNIS W. HO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(CY 8)

(PHOTOGRAPH BY DENNIS W. HO FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

(PHOTOGRAPH BY MARILYNN K. YEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES)(CY 9)

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Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

690 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
June 6, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

How About Slaughterhouse Tour Before Supper, Food Lover?
BYLINE: By SUSAN DOMINUS.

E-mail: [e-mail]

SECTION: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; BIG CITY; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 854 words
For New Yorkers, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, the bucolic counterpart to Washington Square Park's Blue Hill restaurant, is a locavore's idyll. About 30 miles from the city, the restaurant, on the grounds of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture near Tarrytown, is set among green pastures dotted with the chickens, turkeys and pigs that will eventually show up on the menu for both Blue Hill restaurants.

In the letterpressed look of the signage about the property, the tins of fennel pollen and lavender sold in a cafe store along with ''jarred cukes,'' visitors may find their conviction confirmed that supporting local farming isn't just good for the environment; it's a matter of good taste.

Then there's the center's new slaughterhouse.

Only a few weeks old, the slaughterhouse shares the property's farm-charm aesthetic, and is in a small, pale yellow-and-white barn lined with plant beds. Early last week, outside the slaughterhouse, all was quiet, the only sound the lazy, distant buzzing of farm equipment. Inside, a tall young man with a frizzy red beard was placing chickens into tin cones mounted on the wall, with their heads through an opening at the narrow bottom end.

With a sharp knife, he slit their throats so the blood drained, and then easily reached a long arm out to catch one if it flew out of the cone while in its death throes. The chickens' feet scratched against the tin, and their heads banged loudly over and over against the wall as their nervous systems went on postmortem autopilot. A trough below caught the thick blood, which the young man periodically sloshed into a bucket at the end.

And this was chicken-slaughtering the artisanal way. Killed on a Tuesday, the chickens would end up elegantly plated on both Blue Hill menus by Thursday, simply poached and roasted.

''We thought a lot about how diners were going to feel knowing that their chickens were slaughtered here,'' said Dan Barber, the chef and co-owner of the restaurant and a partner with the Stone Barns Food and Agriculture Center, which runs the slaughterhouse and sells the restaurant its poultry and lamb. ''We were a little worried.''

Ultimately, he and Craig Haney, the livestock manager for the center, decided it didn't make sense to have their poultry slaughtered elsewhere. Hipsters and eco-friendly entrepreneurs may be opening more farms in the Hudson Valley, but starting a slaughterhouse doesn't have quite the same appeal, leaving a gap now that so many of the bigger slaughterhouses in the area have been forced out of business by tightening regulations and slim profit margins.

In the absence of a nearby slaughterhouse, Mr. Haney faced long, increasingly expensive drives to the closest one, and Mr. Barber was frustrated by chickens being killed in ways that detracted from their culinary potential. Stress on the chicken, excess blood, skin that's lopped off for the sake of convenience -- all that makes for a tougher chicken than he would like.

''You could have the best-bred animals, the best grass, the most humane care -- and mess all that up with a bad slaughter in 20 minutes,'' said Mr. Barber. Currently, the Stone Barns center gives tours of the grounds, and it has been decided that the slaughterhouse should be no exception. ''To a diner, people have told me that knowing that the chickens were slaughtered here enhances their dining experience,'' Mr. Barber said. ''It gives you a connection to what you're eating.''

But the tour, for now, stops short of bringing visitors inside. Knowing the slaughterhouse is there is one thing -- seeing what happens inside is another. ''No, that might be too much,'' said Mr. Barber, who confessed that the first time he visited a slaughterhouse, he experienced the same visceral revulsion that non-foodies often do.

It may be that for some people, seeing it might do just the opposite of enhancing the dining experience. Just how much of a connection to his or her food is anyone willing to make? But then again, to think that seeing the outside of a slaughterhouse would strengthen someone's connection to the food coming out of it is a little bit like thinking that standing outside a church could bring spiritual enlightenment -- isn't that supposed to come from wrestling with all the messy, improbable, challenging stuff that's happening inside?

Mr. Barber is clearly taking it one step at a time, and the farm is still considering how it might (safely) open up the slaughterhouse to interested individuals or groups (for now, slaughter day happens on Tuesdays, when the farm is closed to the public). He's just relieved that the existence of the slaughterhouse hasn't ''grossed people out and made them not want to order here,'' a concern that suggests how little he senses his organic-friendly clientele truly understands about what goes on at a farm.

The slaughterhouse, he said, is just as much a part of the farm's reality as the baby lambs that were born last week. ''It's about life and death and disease, and that's part of what it means to live in an agricultural community,'' he said. ''We're not Disneyland.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: RESTAURANTS (91%); POULTRY PROCESSING (90%); ANIMAL SLAUGHTERING & PROCESSING (89%); AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT (72%); ENVIRONMENT & NATURAL RESOURCES (69%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (60%)
COMPANY: HUDSON VALLEY HOMESTEAD (51%)
GEOGRAPHIC: NEW YORK, USA (93%) UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: June 6, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Cornish cross chickens wait to be slaughtered near Tarrytown, N.Y.(PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)

A new slaughterhouse, above, at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, in Westchester. The free-range hens provide eggs and, later, ingredients for stew.(PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROB BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. B4)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

691 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
June 6, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

A Doctor Finds Miracles in Medicine
BYLINE: By BARRY GEWEN
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Pg. 32
LENGTH: 1000 words
THE UNCERTAIN ART

Thoughts on a Life in Medicine

By Sherwin B. Nuland

198 pages. Random House. $25.

The celebrated writer-physician Sherwin B. Nuland -- a clinical professor of surgery at Yale, the author of nine previous books, the winner of the National Book Award -- is a believer in miracles. Not the parting-of-the-Red-Sea kind of miracles that suspend physical laws, but phenomena and events that can't be explained by current scientific knowledge, and perhaps never will be.

In ''The Uncertain Art: Thoughts on a Life in Medicine,'' a delightful, companionable collection of occasional articles almost all of which appeared in The American Scholar magazine, Dr. Nuland feels free to follow his interests where they lead him -- into medical history, etymology, even art criticism. He writes about the joy of exercising, the grief of 9/11, the satisfaction of authorship, the pain of losing a cherished friend. But the most engaging and thought-provoking articles deal with subjects that are mysterious, unsettling.

These pieces can be enjoyed for the simple sci-fi pleasure of encountering the inexplicable. Dr. Nuland, however, has a larger purpose in mind: to undermine smug certainties about modern science. By emphasizing the extraordinary he seeks to challenge his profession's often unreflective reliance on technology and restore the doctor-patient relationship, the touchy-feely human connection, to the center of medical practice.

Doctors, he insists, have to be more than technicians. They should be, first of all, humanists, intuitionists, appreciative of each patient's individuality and particular situation, practitioners of a quirky, unpredictable, uncertain art. True healers understand this. ''To become comfortable with uncertainty,'' Dr. Nuland writes, ''is one of the primary goals in the training of a physician.''

And so he leads readers into ''astonishing'' realms where science provides no explanation. He travels to China to determine firsthand if acupuncture is an effective technique. After witnessing two operations and speaking to the president of the Shanghai Medical University, who himself had undergone two thyroid operations with acupuncture, Dr. Nuland comes away a believer -- even though the procedure ''has still not been explained in terms acceptable to most orthodox Western scientists using orthodox Western investigative methods.''

Science as we know it has gone at least part of the way in understanding acupuncture: somehow the needles stimulate the brain to increase its production of analgesic endorphins. But why that happens is not clear, and Dr. Nuland is willing to take a leap into the unknown in search of an explanation: ''Perhaps philosophies may be required beyond those that have been so successful since the scientific method became a major current of Western thought.''

He says pretty much the same thing about electroshock therapy, undeniably effective in combating debilitating depression but also outside the boundaries of mainstream science. Doctors employ it because it works. But they don't understand why it works. In an earlier book Dr. Nuland described his own experience with electroshock therapy during a prolonged battle with severe depression. ''It is truly a modern miracle,'' he writes here.

The spookiest chapter of ''The Uncertain Art'' is ''Mind, Body and the Doctor'' and concerns a ''confusing nuisance,'' the placebo effect. Ever since the time of Hippocrates and Galen, physicians have known about cases in which people recovered from serious illnesses simply because they had the will to recover, often for no more reason than a desire to please their doctor. This is a more common phenomenon than one might imagine.

''Every doctor has anecdotes about this kind of thing,'' Dr. Nuland says. ''I have a bagful.'' He writes about patients with terminal diseases who survived ''for a period beyond all expert predictions,'' because they wanted to witness a child's college graduation or to see a loved one for the last time; and he tells us that for years he has been monitoring the obituaries in his local newspaper: ''Almost always, the number of deaths has shrunk dramatically before Christmas, rising precipitously when the holiday is past.'' In one striking example of the mind-over-matter placebo effect, he twits the ''all-too-rational biomedical establishment'' by once again trotting out the word ''miracle.''

Other chapters of the book are more down to earth. ''Robbing Graves'' is an irresistibly entertaining history of how doctors used to go about obtaining cadavers for their experiments. There were laws against desecrating bodies, so researchers had to rely on an underworld of unsavory suppliers. Inevitably the more entrepreneurial took it upon themselves to increase the number of fresh corpses on their own, with the result that one of the most notorious of them contributed his name to an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary -- ''burke: kill (a person) to sell the body for dissection.''

There's much to be learned from these brief, erudite pieces. Why do we say ''Gesundheit'' or ''bless you'' after a person sneezes? Because, traditionally, it was thought that a sneeze expelled the soul from the body, requiring a prayer to recover it.

Some of the articles are less successful. Dr. Nuland's comments on 9/11 don't really add anything to the gazillions of words that have already been expended on the attacks. An essay on exercise is little more than an exercise in guilt-inducing finger pointing. But none of the chapters are more than a few pages long, and since there's no extended argument to follow, a reader can skip around, or put the book down at any point and pick it up again later.

It's ideal airport or bathroom reading. Dr. Nuland probably understood as much, which may be why he included a piece about bowel movements and regularity. What better place than the bathroom, after all, to learn that it was probably the ancient Egyptians who invented enemas?
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: CELEBRITIES (90%); PHYSICIANS & SURGEONS (90%); WRITERS & WRITING (78%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (77%); SCIENTIFIC METHOD (75%); SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (75%); SCIENCE NEWS (75%); VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS (73%); ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS AWARDS (72%); ANALGESICS (67%)
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (64%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (64%)
GEOGRAPHIC: SHANGHAI, CHINA (52%) EAST CHINA (52%) CHINA (67%)
TITLE: Uncertain Art, The (Book)>; Uncertain Art, The (Book)>
LOAD-DATE: June 6, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN JOSEPH MISENCIK)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

692 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
June 4, 2008 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

In South Florida, Eviction Spares Few
BYLINE: By DAMIEN CAVE
SECTION: Section A; Column 0; National Desk; Pg. 14
LENGTH: 1097 words
DATELINE: MIAMI
In a decade handling evictions for the Miami-Dade County Police Department, Albert Fernandez has run across a middle-class father bankrupted by his daughter's cancer treatment; an old woman scammed by a gambling husband; and countless families perpetually on the edge of poverty.

But he has never turned out as many people as he does now.

It used to take a day or two for officers to get to an address after tenants received a notice to leave. Now, with evictions up by roughly a third over last year, Miami-Dade's backlog is around two weeks, sometimes longer.

''It is what it is,'' Officer Fernandez said, looking at a list of addresses about to be emptied. ''People of all walks of life are getting evicted.''

If South Florida is a barometer for the housing crisis and the economy, the forecast does not look good. Like other areas nationwide, evictions are rising throughout the state, clogging county courts and spawning a boom in companies that specialize in ''eviction services'' like moving furniture to the curb.

In the first three months of this year, Broward County tallied 3,043 eviction requests -- more than it has received in the same period since at least 1999, and an increase of 54 percent over last year. In Miami-Dade, landlords filed for 4,726 evictions from January through April, up 1,157 from the first four months of last year.

Much of the rise comes from foreclosures, which in Miami-Dade County jumped to 311 in January 2008 from 38 in January 2007, but more renters and business owners are also finding themselves unable to pay the bills.

In many cases, one failure leads to another. Owners, banks, renters and developers have become like prisoners attached by ankle chains: when one falls, the others slip too.

Visits to nearly a dozen properties with Officer Fernandez and his partner, Officer Charles Veiga, included several stops in which both renters and owners seemed to be struggling.

Around noon, the officers pulled into a comfortable development in Doral, where a young woman in a red shirt could be seen carrying large garbage bags out of a second-story apartment.

The woman, who identified herself only as Maria, said that she was an accountant, a mother of three, and that she was being evicted because of a double whammy: she had fallen behind in paying the $1,450 a month in rent and her landlord could no longer afford the mortgage and condominium fees, pushing the property toward foreclosure.

The problems, she said, began about a year ago when the estranged father of her children lost his job at a mortgage company and stopped paying regular child support.

''The situation is bad for everyone -- me, the landlord, the father of my kids too,'' said Maria, 36, who would only give her first name because she feared her new landlord would discover her financial troubles. She added that after nearly a decade in Miami, she had started asking relatives in Guatemala for help.

''It's ridiculous to have to move money from my country to here,'' she said. ''This is not how it's supposed to be.''

At another apartment building in an older, poorer area, the owner, Concepcion Rosado, 71, arrived and confronted a couple that had stopped paying the rent several months ago after four years in the apartment.

Tears streamed down the cheeks of Alisa Soriano, 48, as she begged for mercy in a dark, sparsely furnished living room. The rent was $640 a month. She said she would find work soon and so would her boyfriend, a carpenter who stood beside her, silent, with paint splotched on his jeans.

''I won't fail you,'' Ms. Soriano told her landlord in Spanish, between wails. ''I won't fail you. I won't fail you.''

Mrs. Rosado nodded. In her hand, she held the tenants' final effort: $300 in cash and a check for $700. ''It's just that I have to pay taxes,'' she said. ''I have to pay insurance. It's very complicated.''

Ms. Soriano cried. ''Ay, Dios mio,'' Mrs. Rosado said.

The couple had bounced checks in the past and $1,000 was not enough to cover their back rent. But Mrs. Rosado and her daughter, Vivian, a real estate lawyer, decided to let them stay, at least for another month. ''We know these are hard times,'' Vivian Rosado said.

Back in the patrol car, Officer Fernandez agreed. ''Sometimes we go to the same apartment building three, four times a week,'' he said.

The neighborhoods have varied, from the upper-middle class to the down and out. In recent years, he has done evictions on properties owned or inhabited by drug dealers, former N.F.L. stars and renters who try to hide by removing the numbers of their address.

''The hardest ones are the old ladies,'' Officer Fernandez said. Many have been victimized by relatives who took out a home equity loan, often with a forged signature, and then never paid the money back.

''It's tough,'' he said. ''You think of them as your grandmother or grandfather.''

These days, however, most houses are empty when the police arrive.

Many evictions go something like what occurred when Officer Fernandez pulled into the parking lot at the Villas at Midway, where a bank had foreclosed two weeks earlier on a two-story condominium.

Christopher J. Fedor was waiting with a drill in hand. ''We do evictions, trash outs, rehabs,'' he said.

Mr. Fedor had been hired by HSBC, the bank that now owned the property. His job was to change the lock, check the property for damage and clean it out.

In this case, the apartment was nearly spotless. Often, items have been left behind. At one apartment Officer Fernandez visited last week, there was a single white tube sock on the floor of an upstairs bedroom; at another, a teddy bear with blue feet smiled from the top of a dirty stove.

''We had one the other day with a three-foot-long snake under a bed where a baby had been sleeping,'' Mr. Fedor said, his voice echoing off the blank walls and tile floors. ''Miami-Dade fire and rescue had to take it away.''

Mr. Fedor seemed busy, determined, even a bit frantic with the energy of an entrepreneur in the midst of a boom. He said his company, Florida Field Services, started doing evictions a year ago. Since then, he said, business has doubled.

''We work seven days a week,'' he said.

Owners of other eviction companies, like Proeviction.com, which offers help with an eviction in any Florida County for around $400, also said customers seemed to be lining up. When they were asked if they saw any sign of a turnaround, of the market's bottom, their answers were clear.

''We see it getting worse,'' Mr. Fedor said. ''And worse. And worse.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: EVICTION (90%); RENTAL PROPERTY (89%); POLICE FORCES (89%); FORECLOSURE (86%); COUNTY GOVERNMENT (78%); CHILD CUSTODY & SUPPORT (78%); WOMEN (77%); CHILDREN (77%); FAMILY (77%); CONDOMINIUMS (76%); RESIDENTIAL CO-OWNERSHIP (73%); CANCER (72%); MORTGAGE BANKING (67%)
GEOGRAPHIC: MIAMI, FL, USA (96%) FLORIDA, USA (96%) UNITED STATES (96%)
LOAD-DATE: June 4, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Eviction notices like this one are being served more frequently in South Florida.

Albert Fernandez of the Miami-Dade police serving eviction papers last month in Miami. ''People of all walks of life are getting evicted,'' Officer Fernandez said.

Officer Fernandez with a locksmith, Eddie Afraf, in Miami. Banks have hired companies that specialize in evictions.(PHOTOGRAPHS BY ERIC THAYER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

693 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
June 4, 2008 Wednesday

Late Edition - Final

Red, White, Sultry: The Wines of India
BYLINE: By FLORENCE FABRICANT
SECTION: Section F; Column 0; Dining In, Dining Out / Style Desk; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 955 words
DATELINE: NASIK, India
WHEN Ranjit Dhuru, the owner of the Chateau d'Ori winery, walked through his gently sloping vineyards here in February, the harvest was in full swing. ''Already sweet,'' he said, nibbling from tight, healthy bunches of cabernet sauvignon grapes. ''These will be ready to pick soon, in another week.''

Eight years ago, Mr. Dhuru, who made his fortune in the software business, bought land outside Nasik, a city about 100 miles northeast of Mumbai that has become the center of India's rapidly expanding wine industry.

This year, with the help of a consulting oenologist from Bordeaux, Mr. Dhuru expects to produce about 300,000 bottles of white and red wines. By next year, he estimates that a million bottles will bear the Chateau d'Ori label.

The aggressive optimism of entrepreneurs like Mr. Dhuru is easy to understand. In Maharashtra state in central and western India, where Nasik is, more than 40 wineries are in varying stages of development. Government officials say that investment in wine increased by 74 percent over the last year.

''In the next 10 years there will be 300 million upwardly mobile Indians who can afford wine and for whom it will be a lifestyle choice,'' Mr. Dhuru said. ''A lot of them will be drinking Indian wines.''

Aman Sharma, the corporate food and beverage director for the India-based Taj hotel chain, agreed. ''There is already a large population eager for wine,'' he said. In 2006, the annual per-capita consumption of wine in India was estimated at about a tablespoon, but that droplet represents a fourfold increase since 2000.

Most wine made in India is consumed there. And as wine publications, wine clubs, competitions and tasting dinners have taken hold, gradually, Indian wines with notable finesse are becoming available and appreciated.

Grover Vineyards La Reserve, a cabernet sauvignon-shiraz blend from one of India's top wineries, in another wine region near Bangalore to the south, is among the country's most sought-after wines. The 2005 is rich and smoky, with hints of roasted peppers. Its alcohol is listed at only 12 percent on a label that proudly states: ''Made in collaboration with Mr. Michel Rolland, Bordeaux, France.'' Mr. Rolland is one of the best-known wine consultants in the world.

Indus wines, which is the name the Terroir India company uses on its labels, are made in a spanking new white stucco California-style boutique winery atop a hillside overlooking Lake Mukni, south of Nasik. The two-year-old winery has just started planting a vineyard, and buys its grapes from local farmers who, until recently, grew table grapes, still the biggest crop in the Nasik area. The fruit and alcohol of Indus's fresh-tasting sauvignon blanc are well integrated, and the 2007 shiraz exhibits restrained richness.

Indian wineries have to cope with challenges that do not exist in wine regions elsewhere. For starters, the calendar is turned upside down. Even though the region is north of the equator, grapes are pruned in September and picked in February and March to avoid stifling heat and the summer monsoon season.

On the plus side, the vintners can plan to harvest according to the ripeness of their grapes, without having to worry about unseasonal cold snaps and rain.

The grapes are usually gathered by migrant workers under floodlights, from 3 a.m. to around 9, before it gets too hot. ''Labor is not an issue in India,'' Mr. Dhuru said. At his winery, just-picked grapes are kept in refrigerated trucks until they are crushed.

Mr. Dhuru poured several of his wines for visitors in his sparsely furnished four-bedroom guest house, which overlooks the vineyards.

His 2007 chenin blanc was smooth and nutty, not sweet, with good acidity, but too alcoholic at 14.7 percent, Mr. Dhuru said. ''We're in a hot country, and next year we'll have to keep the alcohol in check,'' he said. His sauvignon blanc, in a slightly oaky California fume blanc style, was another big wine.

Fresh-tasting sauvignon blancs, and chenin blancs, sometimes with a slightly sweet finish, are typical of India's whites. They are good complements for seafood and for vegetarian dishes like bhindi masala, which is braised spiced okra, or saag paneer, which is a kind of dense fresh cheese in spinach sauce.

Chateau d'Ori's red wines, like the 2007 cabernet sauvignon-merlot blend, offered lush fruit and hints of bell pepper, and turned out to be a suitable partner for meats and breads seared in the tandoor clay oven. The 2007 merlot was soft and elegant, but a simpler wine.

Many of India's wineries produce shiraz and shiraz-cabernet blends. These often exhibit earthy, vegetal aromas and flavors along with bold fruit. When young, which is the way most of them are sold, they can hold their own against dishes seasoned with cumin, mustard seed, fenugreek and other musky flavors.

Sula Vineyards, established in 1996 on the outskirts of Nasik, is the brand most often on wine lists. Although Nasik has a reputation as the Napa of India, Sula is one of just a handful of wineries designed to receive visitors with a tasting room, tours and a guest house.

Chateau Indage, near Pune, another city in Maharashtra, is 25 years old and, with production at 1 million cases, is said to be the biggest winery in the country. It was the first to make a sparkling wine.

Although bottles from India's smaller wineries are rarely exported, Sula and Chateau Indage wines are sold at winedelight.com and winebuys.com

And if there is a fast-track wine industry, can olive oil be far behind?

''Actually, the guy who fabricates my stainless steel tanks in Nasik is looking into that,'' Mr. Dhuru said. ''He has some land and is planning to import Italian seedlings.''