LIWF

I was rushing about like a mad thing on Tuesday afternoon at LIWF - really didn't have time to blog/tweet anything, it was pretty overwhelming - that show is HUGE, so much bigger than the last time I went, which must have been 1991 - 18 years ago at Earl's Court, or Olympia, can't remember which.

Highlights for me included meeting all the nice people from Naked Wines , who kindly invited me and a number of other Archangels to help find some new stars for their exciting business. Big thanks to Mark, Remi, Josh, Francesca, Greg and Joe - unfortunately I couldn't be there all day but the short time I was there was great fun and really interesting. Hope to attend all 3 days next year, let's see if this blog takes off.

It was also a great pleasure to meet one of the winemakers supplying NW, Argentina's Patricio Gouguenheim - he was there showing off his new vintages, including a delightful rosé, and his new Malbec. I look forward to buying them within a couple of months!

NW tasked me with finding a good value Cava for NW to sell - my peers spent the morning searching for great boutique wines from France, Italy, Chile, Argentina and New Zealand. I found a couple of interesting suppliers:

Torre Oria, based in Madrid, but selling wines out of Catalunya including some very nice brut and semi-seco blancos and rosados. I particularly enjoyed their Marqués de Requena Brut Rosado, aroma bursting with berry fruits and a slight citrussy tang, beautifully dry with a hint of raspberries. 100% Garnacha, 12% alcohol.

Castell d'Or, a larger, co-operative outfit, specialising in wines from all over Catalunya, with multiple brands from the different areas. Their Cava Cossetania Brut Blanco from the Penedes region was enjoyable and realistically priced.

There were a couple of other Cava suppliers around (other than the big hitters Freixenet and Codorniu) but most seemed to be larger providers of Spanish wines in general, rather than regionally focused smaller outfits.

I then moved on to check out the wines from Virginia, mainly from personal interest having travelled to the area on several occasions with work. I'll post about that separately as there were a number of interesting wines (especially the Viogniers).