In the paradise of the Maldives, fine wine is no simple matter

This year everyone seems to be doing what they meant to do in 2020. I had a special birthday to celebrate and had planned to take the whole family — all 12 of us from three different generations — to a resort in the Maldives, where I had been invited to host a couple of wine tastings. Everyone got extremely excited. Then Covid-19 hit.

This year, by which time our family group had grown to 13, the trip looked more likely. But it was not until everyone had landed in Malé — after a school outbreak of chickenpox, widespread flight cancellations, a failed PCR test and one grandchild vomiting multiple times the night before — that we truly believed we had made it.

The eco-resort-island Soneva Fushi turned out to be paradise, and our son declared that I should regard being able to bring them on this trip my greatest achievement. I’m inclined to agree.

But of course I wanted to find out about wine in such an exotic location and so quizzed the head sommelier Charles Brun mercilessly. Because the Maldives is virtually on the equator, no wine is made there. Nor would there be as it is a predominantly Muslim country. Taxes on imported wine mean prices are steep. A friend who had visited the Maldives before tried to bring in some bottles for his and his wife’s own consumption, only to have them confiscated at the airport.

We also have very special wines that aren’t listed. We don’t want people to order rare wines just because they can afford them

The Maldives attracts well-heeled visitors. Joyson Jose, Mumbai-born sommelier at the nearby Four Seasons Landaa Giraavaru resort, told me that a Chinese guest ordered no fewer than eight bottles of Pétrus. He did not specify a vintage but even the youngest one costs an average of more than £4,000 a bottle retail before Maldives mark-ups.

On our first night at the resort, I studied the comprehensive wine list and found to my chagrin that only a handful of wines were less than $200 a bottle. Four- and even five-digit prices per bottle were common. My son and sons-in-law were encouraged to drink beer.

The breadth of the list was extraordinary, however, considering that sommeliers in the Maldives — who seem to vie with each other for who can have the best selection — are at least 3,000km from the nearest serious wine merchant, in either Dubai or Singapore, and far more than that from any serious wine producer. (As well as all the great classics and a general emphasis on organic and biodynamic wines, Brun had handpicked top wines from Japan, China, Turkey and even Syria.)

Moreover, even once a precious wine shipment arrives with an agent in Malé, it then has to be shipped to its eventual island destination. For Soneva Fushi this involves a nine- to 10-hour voyage on a dhoni, the small, traditional Maldivian boat, in a temperature-controlled container. Once it arrives, it has to go straight into storage as the ambient temperature in the Maldives is far too hot for wine.

This presents serious problems for wine service too. Because wine warms up rapidly in the tropics, Brun serves it in small but frequent pours, 3-4C lower than the ideal temperature, and sets his fridges at 4-5C for whites and 10-12C for reds. Being committed to recycling, Soneva Fushi has a glass studio where Brun has designed a special decanter with a cavity for ice cubes in it. (Any plastic brought in has to be taken away by guests themselves.)

The resort may be predicated on sustainability, but Brun admitted that they airfreight in special bottles if required. “We have crazy wine requests here sometimes,” he said. For example, by the time we got there in early April, Brun had sold out of his high-season (winter in the northern hemisphere) allocation of Pétrus and Krug’s two single-vineyard champagnes, as well as wines from the fabulous Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, having sold 10 bottles of DRC in February alone. “Once I sold a bottle of their La Tâche at 11.30pm to a couple,” Brun told me. “The man asked me to be sure to bring a second glass and it turned out to be not for his wife but for me! It’s pretty rare for a somm to be invited to drink La Tâche. He was French.”

Brun is from Provence and his career path winds through France, New Zealand, Los Angeles and, just before the Maldives, a luxury icebreaker in the Antarctic, where his problem was getting wine warm enough. “The wine cellar is always in the centre of a ship to avoid shaking up the sediment in the bottles,” he explained as we sat under palm trees by the Indian Ocean.

On the icebreaker ship, presumably for space reasons, he was limited to 240 different wines, but in his five cellars on Fushi he has about 40,000 bottles of 1,100 different wines — though such is the thirst of his guests that he is always running out. “We also have very special wines that aren’t listed. We don’t want people to order rare wines just because they can afford them.”

Obviously I must have looked awfully gauche poring over the detail of the wine list looking for the (relative) bargains. Brun claims that he knows the tastes of his guests and the contents of his cellars so well that 90 per cent of the time he doesn’t even show them the list but makes specific suggestions. Some of the guests have been coming since 1995 when the resort opened (he arrived in 2013).

About half the guests are repeat bookings and many of them come multiple times a year. He looks at which guests are expected and orders or sets specific wines aside accordingly. “Then I might make up a little cellar for them and send it to their villa for aperitifs or lunch.”

I said it sounded as though he needed a computer program to work it all out, but no. “It’s all here,” he said with pride, tapping his head. “When I look every morning at what’s been sold the night before, I can tell you who drank what.” (Under $200? That cheapskate wine writer presumably.)

With 30 different nationalities visiting, Brun has to stay on top of varying preferences and budgets. According to him, “Russians spend nothing or everything, like the Chinese. Some Brits are now spending a fortune.” (A Maldivian-UK economic index?) Many families sat out lockdown at the resort apparently. And, “lots of Russians cancelled in April”.

Tasting notes on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. More stockists from Wine-searcher.com

Follow Jancis on Twitter @JancisRobinson

Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first