Just received notice about it, in San Diego. Pretty massive list but not much for France or Italy, as I presume it’s because they have their own such tastings. Not sure it’s worth going or not. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been to a ‘trade tasting’ like this. Pinot Days , 5 years ago, was the last one, perhaps?
Have you gone to their website and checked out all of their seminars? It’s a pretty massive event in general, and the ‘grand tasting’ is pretty big, too. I poured one year - would not do it again for my brand but there was a great selection of stuff there and not too crowded.
Keep us posted!
Cheers!
Been getting notices about it a few times a week for months, promising hotel discounts, etc.
I went once, which may have been the first one, I’m not sure. They had a lot of seminars but when I talked to the people who attended and/or the people who did the presentations, I wasn’t entirely impressed. They did step up their game a little bit - the DC conference was markedly better in terms of speakers, maybe because there were so many people available from NY and the east coast. There were a lot of wineries there but most of the non-US wineries tended to be the bigger, corporate ones.
I wasn’t interested in most of the seminars, which seemed pretty basic and some of them were like tastings I was doing with friends, so I wasn’t interested in paying someone to do them for me. But I think for a lot of people starting in the wine business, it could be a good event. And the large tasting on the last day is free to the trade if anyone is in the area.