This year’s Expo was a sellout! I was happy to attend both days again for the 14th time. I took advantage of the special 2 hour window for the trade to roam the aisles searching for new wines and tasting some of the old familiar ones. People do not realize that this is the largest wine tasting in the U.S. Yes California may have more of them but never so many wineries in one place. Unfortunately in recent years there has been a marked absence of some of the elite wineries. What has been happening more and more are wineries coming to the show looking for representation in Mass. I had a personal encounter this year with Sarah’s Vineyard. I had a customer inquiry about Sarah’s Merlot several weeks ago at my store and learned that they had no distributor in Ma. They were coming to the Expo expressly to find representation. I had to go to their booth and sample their wines! What a discovery! Spectacular Pinot Noirs from the Santa Cruz Mtns. I hooked them up with Bay State Wines and hopefully in the next several months my customer will have her case of Merlot and more wines will be added to the Massachusetts portfolio.
I also go to the Expo for their seminars and every year they come up with some great ones. This year I attended a wine and cheese pairing class. You can never learn enough about cheese. This class did not disappoint. I was introduced to Wasik’s Cheese Shop of Wellesley, MA www.wasiks.com. There were six wines paired with eight different cheeses. Two stand out: a Deloach Pinot Noir with Montgomery Cheddar from Somerset England and Neige Apple Ice Wine with a Rogue River Blue Cheese from Oregon. What great combinations!!! For Steve Wasik cheese is just God’s way of preserving milk. Field trips to this shop are a must, but bring your pocketbook
So much about wine is in the marketing and this year there were some great examples of that: you could join the Vampire Wine Society or the Wine Sisterhood. Trying to capitalize on all these vampire movies will prove a successful way to market these Ca. wines. They are all easy drinking and fun. My favorite was True Blood a Cabernet from Napa.
Sisterhood wines are quite a collection of wines that has already gotten a lot of press. The Purple Cowboy was on the Today show last week. Rachel Ray chose their Promiscuous Red as one of her favorites. The real marketing target though is Middle Sisters. There are wines with names like Drama Queen Pinot Grigio, Rebel Red and Smarty Pants Chardonnay. Anyone who is a middle sister or knows a middle sister will be lining up for these wines, all based on a label. The wine and the price(less than $15.00) are good too!
For those of you who are fans of the Goats Do Roam wines of South Africa, they have changed the labels to new and flashy ones. They have also introduced a new wine to their portfolio called Chakalaka, (an African spice). This is a nice fruity spice bomb of a wine, YUM.
I know that Spring is just around the corner and maybe you are starting to crave some of those great Rose’s (NOT White Zin), well Alexander Valley Vineyards Rose of Sangiovese had R.Parker gushing, “one of the finest dry Ca. rose’s I have tasted” I had some and agree! It will be available at the Fruit Center this spring
Another new wine to let your taste buds check out is Tina Marie a smoky cherry Pinot Noir from the Russian River Valley and Fulcrum Wines.
You know that your Sunday is going to start off right when you are greeted at the entrance to the show with decanters of Banfi wines. I started the day off with a taste of their new Super Tuscan called Belnero, www.banfivintners.com
Mainly Sangiovese with bits of “Noble French Varietals, it was beautifully well balanced and delicious and there was also a taste of their famous SummuS too!!
I hope that many of you took advantage of the weekend and participated, if not plan for next year and maybe I will see you there
Cheers
A
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