Jay Leno, the witty host of the American ‘Tonight’ TV show was being melodramatic when one of his jokes earlier this month about ‘the US economy is so bad that..’ targeted wine tasting. He observed, ‘the economy is so bad that the wine tasters now spit the wine into the spittoon so that the next taster can taste it, to avoid wastage of wine.’
Spain may not have been affected as much as Mr. leno would like us to believe about the US industry but certainly one of the recession victims has been the 3-dayVinoélite which opened on 26th Aprilwith around 40 exhibitors-Spanish all, and many were from around Valencia and a few regional ones, including a few regulator and appellation bodies like Murcia, which displayed wines from their member wineries as well.
The carpet area in the Pavilion 5 of Feria Valencia where it had debuted in 2007 (and reported by delwine) with much fanfare and élan, may be the same but the distance between the stalls seemed to leave enough space to play table tennis, even thought the space might be a bit tight for badminton.
Missing sadly was the participation of FPV- Primum Familae Vini, a well known association of 12 top family- owned world wineries that include Antinori, Vega Sicilia, Joseph Drouhin and Torres. The FPV tasting was certainly the highlight of the Fair then.
Many of the elite producers like Enate, Alvarez Nölting, Bodegas Emilio Clemente, Dominio de la Vega, Peñafil, Fariña, Malaga Virgen, Marques de Griñon seemed to be missing. Only a few of the debutantes who are known for the quality wines and who continue to be at the show include Pago de Tharsys, Vicente Gandia, Chozas Carrascal and Sebiran.
Only a look at the official catalogue of exhibitors indicated that the show has been relegated as one of the four arms of what has been labelled as Gastronomia 2009, the other three parts being RestAlimed (Hotel equipments), Espaidolc (desserts and sweets) and Euroagro Fruits, all being held at the highly modern state-of-the-art Feria Valencia complex.
It did not help that there was no America Cup which had brought several visitors from around Spain and the globe. Then Pablo Alvarez, Co-President of the organising committee and CEO of the iconic Vega Sicilia had told delwine after the FVP Tasting, ‘it is going to be tough for a show like this to sustain. There are so many like this already. Next time when there is no America’s Cup, they will have to work even harder.’
Agreeing with his view-point delWine had cautioned that unless the organisers took adequate steps to get more producers and better-known national producers, the show ran the risk of being relegated to a domestic biennial wine show. The unforeseen recession has taken the show a couple of notches even lower and it would be fair to note that the very existence of the show, labelled as a boutique show by the organisers this time, is in danger.
Subhash Arora
P.S. The major attraction was the vintage tasting of Tokais- conducted by the king Pablo Alvarez himself. He presented 10 vintages of Tokai going back to 1956. It was a fqbulous presentation for which nornally people would queue up weeks in advance. But here seats were still vacant;
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