In Thailand, Tropical Wine Is Ready for Its Close-Up

27.08.2024 - 19:12 / cntraveler.com

It’s a steamy May morning in Thailand’s lush Khao Yai National Park, just a two-hour drive northeast of Bangkok, and the tok-tok call of a gecko sounds as I stand on a balcony overlooking the GranMonte wine estate. Among its holdings are 7 guest rooms and 40 acres of vineyards at the edge of a tropical jungle, all baking in the 80-degree heat. The winery’s workers protect themselves from the sun, wearing wide brimmed hats and long-sleeved layers as they prune the vines that tangle and twist around dozens of constructed frames. Later in the year, the grapes that they bear will become bottles of Grenache, Verdelho, and Cabernet Sauvignon—all of them with roots, literally, in Thai soil.

“We do the first pruning of the year now, and then a second pruning in October. In November, you start to see baby grapes,” says Bangkok-born Nikki Lohitnavy, the general manager at GranMonte, as we walk down a graveled thoroughfare that cuts through the vineyard. The estate sits just two hours northeast of the Thai capital, in the green yet dusty Asoke Valley, on the fringe of a jungle that’s home to wild elephants, lar gibbons, and wreathed hornbills. Though the area has a relatively cooler climate compared to Bangkok, an oppressive heat beats down in the summer months, and tropical downpours during monsoon season turn the nearby hiking trails into muddy slopes.

The wine estate of GranMonte is just a two-hour drive from Bangkok, in Khao Yai National Park.

To work with the Thai climate, grapes at GranMonte ripen in the cooler winter months.

Despite the heat, however, Lohitnavy is dressed in jeans as she lucidly explains to me the estate’s harvest schedule. She points out the grape varieties that flank either side of the path with ringing passion: “The grapes change color in December, then there’s ripening and harvest that begins in February. Elsewhere in the world, it would be done at a different time.” The top of the year is the coolest time of year in Thailand: It’s when the climate more closely resembles the weather of harvest season in prolific wine regions like Europe, that of August and September.

Viticulture—that is, the practice of growing grapes whether for wine or your fruit bowl—typically thrives best in landscapes where temperatures are unlikely to drop lower than 55°F or climb higher than 70°F. On our planet, they’re most likely to be found in locations between 30 and 50 degrees latitude, on either side of the equator: Think the Willamette Valley, Oregon state’s wine country; Otago on New Zealand’s South Island; and of course, France.

So to find a winery like GranMonte in Thailand can be surprising, a fact Lohitnavy is keenly aware of. As an oenologist and Thailand’s only woman winemaker, Lohitnavy oversees