The Miami Wine Fair returns for its eight year this coming weekend, September 26th & 27th. This year, exhibitors will be presenting more than 1,500 wines, along with two days of excellent seminars, geared towards novice, enthusiast, and expert alike. Another feature of this year’s fair will be its support to Educate Tomorrow, a non-profit organization that supports youth who are aging out of the foster care system.
This will be my fourth year attending. In years past, I’ve had the opportunity to try some great wines, and learn quite a bit from the fair’s seminar series – which I think is one of its best features. This year, the show will feature 10 seminars over its two days. Each seminar focuses on a specific topic, and includes ample tastings for attendees. A full schedule is available on the Fair’s website, but I wanted to highlight several sessions that I attended last year, and truly enjoyed. Two of the sessions are on Saturday’s schedule, and both focus on the wines of Spain. One session features the wines of the Ribera del Duero, which is one of my favorite wine regions. The second features the wines of Castilla – La Mancha; I was not as familiar with these wines until last year, but found them to be delicious – they’ve also become some of my preferred wines.
On Sunday, a session featuring the wines of Portugal promises to be fantastic; last year, the fair featured the wines of a particular winery; this year, they are casting a wider net, and focusing on a specific grape. This should be an excellent session. Finally, Sushi Samba Dromo, one of Miami Beach’s best Sushi restaurants, is back again for a wonderful Sake Paring. Sake sommelier Midori Roth will present 5 special sake’s paired with some of SushiSamba Dromo’s signature bites.
This year, the fair is also adding two new features involving cheese. First, Cabot Creamery of Vermont is going to be furnishing cheese to the fair for the seminars. Currently, the planned cheeses are their Sharp Cheddar, their Seriously Sharp Cheddar, and their Pepper Jack (one of my favorite nibbling cheeses!). The fair is working on the pairings, and if I learn anything further, you’ll read about it here. Second, Anco Foods, importers and wholesalers of gourmet foods will be hosting a booth featuring a selection of their cheeses, paired with wines from the fair. Two of their productsthat I am hoping will be present, are Quenby Hall Stilton, a delicious cheese from the UK, and St. Andre – a triple-crème brie style cheese that is quite tasty and pairs well with a variety of wines.
One of the reasons that I enjoy this particular fair is that the venue – the Miami Beach Convention Center – lends itself to a more relaxed environment in which all attendees, from novices to experts, can focus on tasting the wines. I find that quite often, novice wine drinkers are intimidated by tastings that are held at wine shops. In one of my recent classes, I dubbed the condition “Wineaux Fauxbia”, a term I coined to describe the fear of things associated with wine. I’ll post something on that in the near future, but for those of you reading this, consider the $75 price of admission to the tasting floor gives you a pretty wide open field to try numerous wines that you’ll not easily find anywhere else. The floor of the convention center is not crowded, so even if a few tables have people in front, there will be others that are wide open to try. And, the people manning the booths are quite friendly, and open to discussing their products should you wish.
Please also be sure to visit the International Wines booth, and talk with my friend Henry Barrow – he’ll be the celebrity pourer for Figge Cellars, a set of great wines from an up-and-coming wine maker in California.
Hope to see you all there!
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