'Bosch is Better

Though I am still in the recovery process from yesterday's Boston Wine Expo, I have a few quick thoughts on the dazzling event, and some comparisons to my favorite wine event, the Stellenbosch Wine Festival.

First of all, event hough they say it opens at 1pm, we clearly needed to be there well before that. Unfortunately, James and I were detained at his house trying to buy Red Sox opening day tickets (we didn't get them, got Yankee tickets for April 21st instead) and didn't leave Cambridge until 12:30. Nevertheless, as we exited the Silver Line stop at World Trade Center station at 1pm on the nose, the gathering herd had...well, gathered. The line stretched in a serpentine fashion all the way out past the Seaport Hotel. And that was just the line to get into a another line to get your ticket taken! The entire process took more than a half an hour. Luckily, it was rather a warm day and we were appropriately dressed.

When we arrived inside the hall, the sheer magnitude of the event captivated us. Acre upon acre of wine, wine-related products, and food splayed out in front of us. We didn't know where to begin. After 10 minutes trying to find the coat check, which we never found until about an hour and a half later, when it was full, we decided to make our first tasting experiences in the Sonoma County booths, starting with Ravenswood Sonoma County Old Vines Zinfandel 2004. I much prefer the Mendocino County Zin by Ravenswood, which is not to say their Sonoma County offering is bad - it's not, it was actually some of our favorite wine of the day - but it will definitely benefit from more time in the bottle. From Sonoma County, we made our way to the South African wines, tasting some Haute-Cabriere Pinotage, a Franschhoek favorite, as well as Diemersdal Pinotage from Durbanville, which I well remembered sharing with Caitlin over mussels at Theo's in Camps Bay. After the stroll down memory lane, we made our way to the Sake booth, which was surprisingly unpopular. Of course, this allowed James to talk about his favorite Sake pairings - "I like to pair with an ice cold Kirin Ichiban, placing the Sake at the bottom and drinking rapidly" - but also allowed us to sample some very fine wine. The exhibitor there was also the best of the day by far. He really knew about the process and clearly loved explaining it to wine people who many times do not give Sake its due. Their unfiltered offering, Kikusui Funaguchi, was my favorite, a viscous, cloudy and rich tasting offering in a can which checks in at 19% alcohol by volume.

After our first round of tasting, having made our towards the celebrity chef kitchens, we started walking through the food displays, enjoying many new treats along the way. However, after about 15 minutes we decided food would not get us drunk, so it was right back to the tasting floor. By now, at about 2:30, the hall was packed with wine people. It was also during this period that many of the serious wine writers, tradesmen and true oenophiles were making their rounds. Which, of course, means they were hogging up all the good tables wanting to talk about esoterica with the merchants. We did manage to slip into some smaller places along the way, however, including the intriguing Clos de Lachance, a small, single-vineyard winery in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Central California. Their "hummingbird series" zinfandel and syrah had clearly benefited from the careful handling of a small vintner's touch. After this visit to California, we jumped over to Portugal and indulged in some very big, bold and fruit-forward wines. My favorite was the Ferreira 10-Year Tawny Port, with wonderfully rich fruit and oak flavors that seemed to linger for almost half an hour after tasting. Certainly made me want to visit Portugal for real and sample some contemporaries.

Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent tasting American wines, which but for MacRostie's fantastic Pinot Noir and the Central Coast Zinfandel offering from Pietra Santa Winery, were less than thrilling. In all, James and I guessed we tasted around 75-100 wines in less than three hours, which made the cold walk back slightly more bearable. Nonetheless, while impressive and large, the Boston Wine Expo pales in comparison to the stellar Stellenbosch affair. Now, of course, it is a much different type of wine celebration, with the best of the best from across the world gathered here in Boston, while Stellenbosch is a celebration of one region, however formidable. Still, I much prefer the smaller celebrations in that we could taste our way through the entire region and really get a sense of it. With a lack of a clear strategy in Boston, we sort of found ourselves all over the map, so to speak, and while we certainly had some dizzying highs, they were fewer and further between. There was also a much more rushed feel to the Boston event. With only three hours to taste and 1800 wines available, we ended up having to make choices based on availability and timing, much more than in Stellenbosch. It was a much more closed in feel to be sure. Finally, and I believe most regrettably, for whatever reason, there was no way to buy any of the wines we sampled at the Wine Expo. At Stellnbosch, when we finished tasting after four or so hours, we could go into the shop pick up the ones we liked then retire to the field behind the Paul Roos Centre and in the shadows of the mountains drink sundowners and relax. In Boston, when we were done tasting, the event was over, no room to further discuss what we found or enjoy some spoils of tasting. Still, the event, while certainly more of a trade show than a festival, is worth every penny to go to in order to beef up your education about wine.