From Bangalore to Bordeaux
This past summer at Ottawa’s Thali Restaurant, I caught up with Namratha Prashanth, the inspiring woman behind the Bordeaux wine brand Solicantus. Over a delicious dinner and wines, Prashanth started by telling me about her journey from Bangalore to Bordeaux, recounting the story of her daughter’s recent sixteenth birthday party in Arcachon, Bordeaux’s famed seaside resort. It was a seemingly typical teenage girl’s party – surrounded by her French friends, speaking fluent French, and doing typical, teenage girl birthday party things. But it made Prashanth realize how she and her daughter were living a second life, thousands of kilometres away from India where she left under a decade ago for the first time.
Prashanth’s first life was in the thriving multicultural, tech hub city of Bangalore in southern India. She obtained a degree in hospitality management, and married the love of her life. She also then accepted her in-law’s stipulation that she would not work outside the home as a condition for marrying their son. Living in this traditional extended family household, Prashanth was not allowed to initially leave the house without her husband. Frustrated and determined to maintain her sanity, she decided to learn French, sneaking away for lessons at the nearby Alliance Française.
Along the way Prashanth had a baby girl and eventually began to work outside the home at an IT company. It was there that she experienced her first taste of freedom, sent to Paris for training in 2013, though not before having to obtain a permission or “no objection” letter from her husband. When she returned, things became progressively worse, and her husband increasingly violent and abusive, to the point where she “quit her job to keep the peace.” Unfortunately, that changed little. Feeling that her, and her daughter’s lives were in danger, she moved back to her parents’ home.
While considering what to do next, in a society that is largely less than accepting of divorced women, her sister encouraged her to start a new life elsewhere. Prashanth decided to put her hospitality degree and French language skills to good use and left India, with her daughter in her parents’ care. She enrolled in a wine MBA in Bordeaux and during an internship at Chateau Siran, realized that the “vineyards and vines were healing.” It also made her realize she wanted to start a project that could give back to the suffering and inequities of female children in her native India.
In 2019, Prashanth applied for a visa to stay in France and put together a business plan for the wine project Solicantus, which is made in partnership with fourth generation winemaker Corinne Chevrier of Château Bel-Air La Royère in Blaye. Chevrier makes the wine and Prashanth assists with the harvest and is involved in the blending of the wines.
Solicantus also has a Canadian connection as Prashanth has cousins, uncles and aunties in Toronto who having lived in India before coming to Canada understand the complexities of life there and unconditionally support her. I tasted the Solicantus Blanc Entre-Deux Mers 2022 with Thali’s Chef owner Joe Thottungal’s Lobster Mango Moilee, lobster in mango coconut sauce with string hoppers, and both were singing. The red Blaye Côtes de Bordeaux 2019 is an approachable juicy merlot dominant blend that complemented the delicious Tellicherry Pepper Lamb chops.
The wine is sold in India, the Maldives (her first order was there), Canada and France with part of all wine sales going toward educating girls in India.
photo credit: Suliman Chadirji, PMP