boston wine expo
Did anyone check out the wine expo today??? How was it? Any food pairings ?
admiralackbar
Feb 10, 2008 05:23PM
21 Replies so Far
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Actually one of the best pieces of advice that I have ever received on Chowhound was to head to the Rhone area. The wines, including the Pierre Usseglio CDP, were quite honestly magnificent. We were in the Grand Cru Cafe most of the time after the trade hours, which had awesome wines but totally mismanaged. The setup made for a 4 hour line to taste the wines in groups.
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I spent time in the Grand Cru Wine Lounge and though the wines were generally very good, there was much less diversity than in previous years. Almost all of the wines were CA, French or Italian. I agree it was poorly run this year, with their staggered wine time. Which they eventually stopped after so many complaints.
In the Grand Tasting, I found some excellent Sake and South African wines. Foodwise, I was impressed with the Italian cookies at "Sweet Santangelo's" which is located in Woburn. (www.sweetsantangelo.com). I especially liked their walnut parmesan biscotti.
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I stopped going a few years back, when it seemed oversold, and overrun by folks who were there to swill wine, not taste it. Sort of a nightmare tradeshow experience, which is too bad, since there were clearly a lot of worthy wines to be tried if you were willing to elbow your way through the throngs of people who had already sampled fifty wines without spitting.
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I like the Expo and treat it like a giant wine bar experience -- a great opportunity to gain a lot of wine experience over an afternoon. I rarely spit out the wines, the amounts are small and there are plenty of opportunities for pacing: the company reps are often knowledgable, there's a pretty wide variety of snacking options, and a number of good lectures. The food this year was better than usual in my opinion: crabcakes, thai, steak, oyster stew, cheeses/crackers/breads, chocolates, even Moma Chang's pork dumplings (Alison Hearn and Joanne Chang had a dumpling demonstration).
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Hey, I was the cook at the Thai place!...Hope you didn't get the batch with the soggy noodles ;)... We tried to save them til everyone was too drunk to notice....
I have no idea how anyone could get drunk there; the tastes were so small as to be miniscule. I went to one of the Rhones at the end of the day, looking for an actual glass to enjoy during packing up, and they didn't pour more than a tablespoon...And no, I was scarily sober...
A fellow hound showed up and saved me by bringing a few tastes of New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs...I said anyone bringing wine could get to the front of the line...surprisingly few people took me up on it, but some did...
I managed one of the crabcakes; not bad at all..Not a lot of unique cheeses there, but I did have one good aged Asiago...It would be fun to walk the show as a consumer, but I'd definitely try to get a deal on tickets, or do what Pluziam did; volunteer saturday(pretty fun, at a show like that), and get a free ticket for Sunday....
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Those noodles were pretty good, thanks gallerygirl. I tried contacting you before the show but the email was returned, don't know why. Glad that you had some wine and liked the crabcakes.
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I also went to the expo but only to the grand tasting room. I had allot of fun and i never spit and i must say i wasnt there to "swill" wine, i was there to taste it. Just because you spit does not make you a better wine consumer than anyone else, so please refrain from making alienating statements, wine is suposed to be fun. I think it was quite packed but also still enjoyable. I spent allot of time in the portugese section and the new zealand section. I only wish there was more selection of port but i cant complain.
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Of course spitting doesn't make you a better wine consumer. But I think it's fair to observe that if you sample 50 wines without spitting, you're probably not appreciating the subtleties of those later ones. With tickets at $85-$175, my goal is to try 60 to 80, maybe 100 wines; I map out an intinerary, and move fast.
Were I to swallow 50 ounces of wine (about two bottles) at the pace I do tastings, I soon wouldn't be able to distinguish a Grand Cru from a Plonk of the Month. That's assuming fifty 1-oz pours, where at my last few Expos many exhibitors were doing 1.5 - 2 oz pours. Perhaps you have some extraordinary abilities on this score, or take the whole two days to try a smaller sample of wines.
Anyway, it was hard not to notice at my last few Expos that more than half the crowd seemed to be getting stinko. I found it a less-than-optimal wine-tasting environment: jostly, loud, a bit claustrophobic at the peak periods, many exhibitors too harried trying to keep up with outstretched glasses to discuss their wines. Maybe this year's was different?
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That's true - wasn't there that story from the Bible about the good wine at the wedding usually being served first, not last? ;)
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MC, while I agree with you on nearly everything, I think your analysis is a bit flawed here. I'm quite serious about wine, and regularly attend tastings, but I don't spit, I pour. That is, no matter how big the tasting pour, I take a single sip, do my "tasting", then pour out the rest. That way, I'm drinking more like a quarter of an ounce of wine, and normally my palate is worn out long before I'm inebriated (after about 20 wines or so). The better guide is to be careful about the order in which one tastes, starting with sparklers, then dry whites, full bodied whites, lighter reds, heavier reds, then dessert wines. It requires circulating around a few times, but it's worth it. Also, for what it's worth, I haven't heard anything that makes me want to go to the Wine Expo. Instead, as an example, I went to a free wine tasting on Friday night at a shop in Mansfield, where they had over 50 bottles open, along with a bunch of Nantucket-produced spirits and the whole selection of Starbucks and Godiva after-dinner liqueurs (it was Valentine's Day themed). The standouts at the tasting were a couple of Tuscan wines from Banfi, and a great Bordeaux-blend from Sebastiani called Secolo, which I hadn't tried previously.
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I agree that it's useful to take things in the order you suggest (hence the importance of mapping out a route), and to be wary of palate fatigue -- I like to take a breather and eat something every 15 wines or so. I'm no pro, but 1/4 ounce seems like an awfully meager mouthful to me. I typically sip 3-4x that, which is why I have to spit if I'm going to sample a bunch.
It sounds like this year's Expo was less of a cattle drive, but it's still an unappealing tasting environment to me.
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I went yesterday for the first time. After reading some of the posts here about it being way too crowded, etc. I was pleasantly surprised at how manageable it was. We parked for free on Summer St., walked in late, around 2 p.m. and had no troubles. I didn't experience or notice any jostling and there was nothing we couldn't sample that we wanted to. I'm not very knowledgeable about wine, so I saw this as an opportunity to try some wines I would never purchase on my own and likely not even order at at restaurant. The clear highlight was just about everything at the Chatueauneaf du Pape area. We sample some of those offerings fairly early, which raised the bar very high and made everything else difficult to appreciate. Roookie mistake, I guess. However, even so, I did really enjoy some of the Sonoma CabSavs and one particular Argentine Malbec. But, I got through most of the reds I was interested in and it was back to those amazing French wines.
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My theory is after 20, if you get an outstanding wine at 25, will you know it? The palatte can only take so much.
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I start with white wines (actually this time I started with apple icewine from Quebec) and slowly get to the reds, I also wind up skipping most of the producers. My attitude had been that if it's a really good red or white wine I'll notice it, fragrance is a good indicator I think. I had pretty solid reactions to the wines I had through to the end of the show on Sunday, but I guess it's not like being "fresh" all day.
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I'm a little late on joining this post. Just wanted to see what others thought of this year's Wine Expo. My husband and I are very game but thought it was horribly managed -- just too crowded. I won't be back. I get a lot more from tastings like wine dinners. Is anyone signing up for the wine dinners at Petit Robert bistro this winter/spring? Has anyone been to any of them to date?
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Okay, now I'm confused. Lucymax describes exactly the kind of unpleasant experience I've had at Expos past that deterred me from returning in the last few years. Yet many Hounds tell a different story from this year's Expo: well-managed, not too crowded, worthwhile.
Is this a question of timing? Are there windows during the two days when the crowds aren't offensively thick?
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Historically, Saturday is pure hell. Not only are the serious tasters out, but the lushes are too. Sunday (early) seems to be better.
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We were there at 11:00am on Sunday (trade). While it wasn't busy, we found that the Expo itself was mismanaged. Just to get our badges was confusing. One booth said that we had to go to another booth, but that booth said that we have to go to another line so on and so forth. Forget that it's Sunday morning, I am at the point where I don't want to taste wines - I want a real drink. There was a snafu getting glasses as well. Perhaps I ought to chalk it up for being on Sunday. Once settled in, the wine flowed. The wine reps were informative. We left once the public doors opened and the crowds stumbled in.
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I've become a bit contrarian at the Wine Expo because of the crowds: if a producer is busy I'll walk on and circle back (for instance Rhone was packed most of the day but better later), there were also crowds at many places where I just wasn't interested in the wine, if there's a crowd I'll actually get away from the table before tasting, I'll also stop off at the lectures and cooking celebrations, the first thing I did this year was go see the non-wine booths and get some food in my stomach.
I think it's right that Saturday is busier but with all those wines it's just designed to draw crowds. I think I remember from several years ago that there were once two "Grand Tasting" events scheduled, maybe two on Saturday and one on Sunday, this might have been meant to help with the crowds.
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We went on Saturday. I doubt we'll be back but if we consider it, I'll push for Sunday. But we really felt like cattle -- they need to make the experience a little nicer. At noon we went to a seminar, which was managed just fine but the hotel had practically no signs in their lobby for Wine Expo -- there were many little things like that that made me feel like no one cared. And it's an expensive event.
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I went for the first time this year. Many friends try to pull me into going each year and it just never appealed to me, but this time I caved. I was expecting an absolute disaster, so my expectations were really low. It was crowded, but compared to some of the horror stories I'd heard, it was all that bad. I was able to try some good wines and to converse a bit with the wine makers, but to be completely honest, I treated this more as a social event than a wine tasting. I figured if I had that mentality going in I wouldn't be disappionted, and I wasn't.
I had heard horror stories about people waiting in line to get in for 45 minutes, so I got there about 20 minutes early, and much to my suprise, the doors were already open. I literally walked right in and began tasting.
I'd have to say, if you're a wine snob who wants to sit and ponder and jaw about wine, this probably isn't going to be your favorite wine event of the year. If you go with a light hearted attitude and are more focused on enjoying the company of some friends and tasting some decent wines in the process, you'll enjoy yourself.
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