Hi Berserkers,
At the last minute, I attended the annual California Wine fair held at the beautiful Fairmont Royal York hotel in downtown Toronto, which was connected via underground to the Royal York Plaza building where I work. This was my first time attending such a large wine exclusive event. I have a trio of threads to post. This first one will be a review of the event itself. The second will be lessons learned at the event. The third will be a review of the varietals in general and a few tasting notes plus some standout picks.
EVENT OVERVIEW:
EVENT: 2011 California Wine Fair
DATE: Monday, April 4th 2011 7:00 PM – 9:30
LOCATION: Fairmont Royal York hotel, downtown Toronto, ON, Canada
EXHIBITORS: 150 California wineries
The event was held in the spacious Canadian Room convention hall on the hotel’s third floor. There was no overcrowding and the layout was easy to navigate through. It started on time and ended on time. Due to the large number of exhibitors, there were no booth setups. Just rows of tables snaking the inside of the room plus more rows hugged against the four walls of the room going in a circle.
Each exhibitor got a table, a chair for whoever was serving, and a cardboard sign with the name of the winery. Some exhibitors shared tables due to only having a few wines to present. If you’ve been to a similar event, you’re familiar with this kind of setup. The exhibitors were friendly, knowledgeable and more than willing to give me educational notes and opinions – sometimes even criticizing their own products which speaks well of their integrity but probably wouldn’t endear them to their marketing departments.
The northeast and northwest corners were set up with identical roast beef sandwich stations where staff were carving absolutely massive roasts for sandwiches. The southwest and southeast corners were set up with cheese, cracker and fruit stations.
Organization was excellent and there were no delays. There wasn’t a single technical hitch or glitch in service. Spitoons were emptied regularly, water pitchers for rinsing glasses were filled constantly with fresh spring water, and drinking water stations were set up throughout the hall.
California wine is famous for bold red wines with lots of flavour and their Chardonnays. There were plenty in supply here to try. Unfortunately, there wasn’t nearly enough time to try them all.
The single biggest problem with the event was the time allotted. With 150 wineries exhibiting, there was simply not enough time for visiting them all. When I’ve gone to mixed food and wine shows, I’ve been able to do the entire show floor because of course there’s always something I decide to pass on or just doesn’t interest me. At this show, I was interesting in EVERYTHING and that meant one of two choices – rush through everything or take my time and get to only a small number of tables. I chose the latter option and have no regrets for it. Just a good excuse to go back next year.
I was also quite shocked to see that none of the attending wineries chose to bring any dessert wines. California has developed a great reputation for botrysized, late harvest and Muscat dessert wines. Not one of the 150 exhibitors chose to bring one. Rubbing salt into my wound, my Google search turned up several bloggers who attended last year’s event who mentioned several dessert wines were present then.
Despite the short time and lack of sweet wines, I did enjoy the event. I learned quite a bit and was glad that I had attended. However, this enjoyment came more out of the experience itself and the knowledge I gained than what I actually sampled. I will get to my opinions on the wines and some brief tasting notes in a future thread.
Finally, some interesting highlights:
• The Robert Mondavi winery gets the honor of having served both the most expensive and the least expensive wine of the entire event: The $140 Robert Mondavi Reserve Cab Sauvignon and the $11.25 Woodbridge by Robert Mondavi Moscato
• Quady was the only winery serving dessert wines, their orange muscat Essencia and their black muscat Elysium. Both won rave reviews from people who were tasting them
• Variety wasn’t exactly the theme of the night, to say the least. Out of the 150 wineries present, only one brought a Muscat wine (Robert Mondavi), only one brought a Tempranillo, (A Cellar Full of Noise), only one brought a Riesling (Delicato Family Vineyards), only one brought a Sangiovese (Toccatta) and just two brought a Viognier (Cline Cellars and Perry Creek).
• The oldest vintage present was a Nichols Winery & Cellars 200 Merlot from Paso Robles
• The longest lineup for tasting was the Robert Mondavi table. They had a lineup the second the doors opened and it never let up the entire night