• Thursday, July 10, 2025

One In a Billion: Becoming India’s First Master of Wine

From Mumbai to Master of Wine—Sonal Holland’s inspiring journey of passion, perseverance, and breaking barriers in India’s evolving wine industry.
on Jul 05, 2025
One In a Billion: Becoming India’s First Master of Wine

A STORY OF SELF-TRANSFORMATION AND HEARTENING TALE OF ACHIEVING ONE’S DREAMS.
When Sonal C Holland left her high-paying corporate job, she knew she what she didn’t want—a boring nine-to-five—but not exactly what she wanted. Enter wine, a drink enjoyed only by the elite in India, but with immense potential for growth. Wine communication and teaching would play to Sonal’s strengths as a communicator and a networker, she and her husband Andrew rightly identified. The goal was set: to become India’s first wine communicator by winning the title of Master of Wine, the highest certification in the wine world and held by barely 400 people around the world.
And no one in India.
Thus began the long and tumultuous journey towards the title, with hours spent poring over books on a motel bed, a scruffy bus ride across the Australian summerscape, birthdays away from family and friends and a little daughter—all towards an almost unattainable goal.
In One in a Billion, Sonal narrates the story of being from a middle-class family in Mumbai to becoming the first Master of Wine from India and being instrumental in making the drink popular in the country. Along the way, we get an overview of wine tasting, the Indian wine market, the technicalities of wine production as well as fascinating nuggets about wine.

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