Despite being in the booze business for over 20 years, I’ve never made it to the London Wine Fair. It would’ve been time-consuming and expensive to book a special trip, and as I was happy with my existing suppliers there seemed little chance of a commensurate return. But this year, when a family visit took me to London mid-May, it seemed fated that I should attend.
I can’t say if the fair was better or worse, less or more useful, than previous years. The Drinks Business website is claiming “London Wine Fair sees visitor decline but improvement in audience quality”. I don’t think the rise in quality is linked to me attending for the first time, but rather the amount of serious interaction between exhibitors and visitors. As one regular said to me: “The show’s more serious this year, less celebratory.” I took my two days there seriously, for sure, and I found plenty to enjoy if not celebrate.
The French stands were showing particularly well. Despite the valiant efforts of countries like Moldova, Ukraine and Greece (more than 40 producers!) the variety and quality of the French wines made them the most commercial for me. They’re the cheapest to import directly, which helps, though I wish the winery I spent an hour discussing buying a pallet from had mentioned in advance that they already have an exclusive agent in the UK.
It would also have been good to get advance notice of the programme of tastings, talks and other events. I kept checking on the LWF website, but it seemed to be only a day or so before opening that the details were revealed. This made it hard to plan, and I do rue being 30 seconds too late for the cut-off for Tuesday morning’s port and chocolate tasting. I mean, who doesn’t want to try Taylor’s 50-year-old and a 65% Peruvian dark chocolate at 10.30am? We sell a lot of port and we sell a lot of chocolate, but do they really match? It seems I will have to do my own research.
One tutored tasting I did make it into was a fascinating one on sake. I learned a lot, and I also smelled the most disgusting liquid I’ve ever encountered in a professional context. (I’m excluding that time a student friend downed a whole pint of snakebite and then … oh never mind.) To avoid unnecessary shaming, I won’t name the sake in question; all I’ll say is that it was pink and sparkling, and when the tutor asked at the end for votes on favourite glasses, it received nul points.
A comparative tasting of eight sparkling Vouvrays was also very educational, not to mention very acidic. Its only rival in enamel-stripping was the sandwich I had at lunchtime on Monday. That was about the size of my head, with a filling consisting of a slice of something pink, shreds of something green, and strips of something red. I can be no more specific. It was smeared with a pickle of extraordinary ferocity and was priced, as we say in the trade, ambitiously.
What of my ambitions? I wasn’t depending on making any significant deals, so couldn’t be disappointed, but I did find one potential new wholesaler and two producers I’d like to import directly. If I had more room on my shelves and more money in the bank I could’ve started more serious conversations, but I’m happy with that level of business.
On top of my focused activity, I enjoyed generic tastings from New Zealand and South Africa – though the enjoyment was hampered by them being crammed into a ridiculously small enclosure near the entrance. It needed to be twice as big. And that attendee who insisted on standing in front of the spittoon while composing a long text home … gonnae no do that?
Three cheers for the Wine Merchant Top 100, which was laid out with plenty of elbow room. And well done to the judges, who selected a fantastic range of winners in all styles.
Amongst the losers, in my view, are the large wholesalers who chose not to show. Of the top five suppliers in the last Wine Merchant survey, only Hatch Mansfield had a presence. If the likes of Boutinot and Liberty were to take a stand next year, it would greatly increase the chances of me making the 700-mile trip from Orkney again. Next time I’ll take my own sandwiches.
