HEADY SUCCESS

By making wine out of the abundant kiwi fruit that would otherwise be left to rot, an engineer-turned-entrepreneur puts Ziro Valley on the country's viticulture map

- By YUVRAJ МЕНТА

In the mist-draped pocket of Ziro Valley in Arunachal Pradesh, a quiet revolution bubbles in stainless-steel tanks. And stirring it is a former engineer who bet her career, savings and reputation on an idea most dismissed as fanciful: turning India's neglected kiwi fruit into fine wine. Tage Rita Takhe is the founder of Naara Aaba, the country's first kiwi winery.

It was a glass of wine shared with her husband that sparked the thought of coaxing Ziro’s bumper crop of kiwi, which often rotted unsold, into something more valuable—and potable. She had grown up surrounded by apple orchards, plum trees and pear groves in her parents’ home in Biiri, a small village in Ziro Valley. “The fruits in our orchard often lay fallen and rotting, a lasting, painful memory that shaped my view of farming,” says Rita.

In 2016, she took a Rs 4 crore loan and sank her savings into a winery she called Naara-Aaba, where naara stands for place or clan, and