Are you ready for Nashik? Indian wine makes its way to the world stage.

In 1988, Amod Chopra, a Berkeley, Calif., importer of groceries and beer from India, decided to try bringing in wine from the subcontinent, a sparkler under the Omar Khayyam label. It took him 12 years to unload that one container on the broad-minded, wine-loving Bay Area. Now he's betting on a different horse, Sula Vineyards, India's first entry into international-grade winemaking--and his client list now includes some of the snazziest white-tablecloth restaurants in Northern California.

Sula is the brainchild of an Indian-born, Stanford-educated Silicon Valley escapee,…