As a wine lover, I consider myself very fortunate to live so close to New York. I cannot possibly attend all of the trade tastings for which I receive invitations and that doesn’t include the events for which I haven’t received an invite. In a recent 2 week stretch, I attended 5 wine events, two of which were a gold mine of leads for future tours.

First there was a week that started with a Wines from Chile tasting and ended with an Argentina tasting featuring Sebastian Zuccardi speaking on the topic of terroir in Mendoza.

The following week had 3 events: a South America tasting sponsored by Penin, the wine guide; an Italian tasting of Summer Wines at the Italian Trade Commission; and a superb German tasting featuring top winemakers in person.

It is a hassle and a time commitment; you basically spend the entire day in the City and getting around Manhattan in 90 degree weather isn’t very pleasant. Some of the tastings are duds but part of my goal is to self improve and of course make contacts for my Wine Lovers wine tours.

I will dedicate 2 future blogs to the Zuccardi and German tastings sharing the information I learned. Those two events more than made up for the relatively worthless time spent with the other three.