Day 3 opened with a tasting of Saint Emilion Grands Crus Classes from the 2000 and 2005. I was there early enough to try all the wines on offer and I'll be posting the notes on these separately.
That took up most of the morning so after lunch we attended another seminar of Burgundy wines. This was the least impressive tasting. The explanations were in French and translated by a lady who was not conversant with technical terms so much I don't believe the full value was derived from this. Also, only 5 wines were tasted and no reason was given as to why these 5 were chosen. There was also a sommelier who spoke about the pairing of these wines with Chinese food. While interesting for the Chinese in the audience, some of us were mystified by the dishes he was talking about. Not good compared to the German seminars we attended.
More wandering around the halls led us to tastings of Catena, Trapiche and Montes from South America as well as some small Italian producers. Of the big names, we were able to try Allegrini's Palazzo de la Torre 2003 (very good) and the Amarone 2001 (excellent).
Since we found the burgundy seminar wanting, we wandered over to Jadot and as luck would have it, there were no people tasting so we were able to get a good grounding on Burgundy from Pierre-Henri Gagey who runs Maison Jadot. The basic Bourgogne Blanc and Rouge were quite good. Also remarkable for its structure and aging ability was the Chateau des Jacques from Moulin-A-Vent. I didn't know Gamay could have this kind of concentration. Unfortunately most of the top wines were no longer available but we came away from the booth with a better sense of Burgundy than we got from the seminar.
Passing by the Taylor's booth we saw a 30 year old Tawny that we were not able to try before. We were able to try some of this as well as the 1999 LBV. The 40 year old was very nutty with a dry finish. Smooth and quite light in the mouth. Very good stuff.
We were just wandering around the show till it ended hoping that some of the wines would be given away or sold at baragain prices since this was the practice in earlier shows. Unfortunately, HK Customs agreed to the duty free importation of the wines only on the condition that they be re-exported after the show. An inventory of bottles, including empties, was made every day and if there was any discrepancy, the importer would be taxed.
Although I left thw show empty-handed, I'm eagerly anticipating the next installment of Vinexpo in Asia.