Wine Salon Imports

In June 2009, we travelled to Bordeaux’s famed Vinexpo, a huge, trade-only wine show held every two years on the edge of Bordeaux Lac. It’s the only world-class event that assembles all the wine and spirits trade players from around the world. There are 2,400 exhibitors from 41 countries, 45,000 visitors from 140 countries walking the one kilometre-long main hall and several slightly smaller spaces around. Overwhelming as it was, we had a very specific mission: to source small parcels of a range of handmade, family estate owned, boutique wines to ship to Australia for Wine Salon. After pouring over copious research and asking everyone worth their wine-salt for advice, I had a fairly good idea of what I was aiming for: a boutique Champagne, a flinty Chablis, a Bordeaux Supérieur, Sauvignon Blanc, and a Côte du Rhône red.  Over three days, we tasted about 60 to 70 wines from each of the appellations, to narrow down to our final parcel of five.