Scoop on Wine Expo

Filed in archive Wine Events on June 27, 2007

I've been reading around the web trying to find the latest scoop and stories from the recent wine expo - VinExpo. I thought I'd find more than I have been. Maybe I just need to keep digging. But, at least, here's something from a been there done that expo attendee, Neil Pendock, who says things weren't so hot.

From MO's Memories:

After another disappointing VinExpo experience for SA wine producers last week, Neil Pendock suggests an alternative marketing avenue.

While SA winemakers waited for their wine to be delivered at VinExpo last week, Sunday Times columnist David Bullard and I were dining at The Showroom on De Waterkant. In town for the Cape Town Book Fair, Bullard chaired a panel discussion on the crisis in SA wine. Now some players deny there is a crisis, but WOSA were certainly not having a good week as communications manager André Morgenthal had to withdraw from the panel, having fallen into a hole the previous evening. [...]

After a couple of glasses of Bruce Juice Sauvignon Blanc, made for Showroom owner Bruce Robertson by winemaker Bruce Jack, chef Bruce treated us to an Edgbaston Chardonnay 2006 followed by a Shiraz 2004 from the same pitch. Confirming once again the value of a fashionable restaurant run by an oenophile as an effective wine showroom.

The big flaw in the wine show model is that the fermented fruit of the vine is normally enjoyed in the presence of food rather than presented in a Rand Show format. A fact that has not escaped restaurateur extraordinaire Michael Olivier, whose latest opus A Restaurateur Remembers (Double Story, 2005) makes the point, with knobs on.