prowein

I was lucky enough to head off to Prowein again this year, then to Champagne and Italy. As usual Prowein was nuts, with 6800 wineries showing off their goodies from 64 countries spread out over 71000 square meters... I racked up as much as 14ks a day scooting around to meetings. Plenty of time in Champagne too, catching up with Bernard Remy, Champagne Bouche, Le Mesnil and Roger Brun. Found a spectacular producer in Grand Cru Ambonnay too... stay tuned for more on that front. The big news out of Champagne is the deeply held fear within the region that within 20 years there will be hardly any small producers left... and that perhaps this will also bear out in the Bordeaux, what with the big companies paying up to 7 euros for a kilo of grapes, vineyards now fetching 1-2 million Euros per hectare and recent changes to succession taxes. Now is a very good time to buy small producer champagne...

We packed Matt off to Prowein and Champagne again this year to hunt down some quality reds from Europe and perhaps another Champagne producer or 2 to add to the 3 awesome producers we already import... Click here to see the Champagne houses we currently import and you can check out some articles on our previous expeditions via this search query. Prowein was especially nuts this year, with 6,500 exhibitors from over 60 countries showing their wares (that’s around 4,000 more producers than there are in Australia) and about 60,000 trade visitors tasting and buying.

We packed Matt up and bundled him off to Prowein in Dusseldorf and a few Champagne houses in France on a mission to find us some seriously high quality Champagne. There’s plenty of good stuff available from the bigger brands in Australia but we wanted some of the good and great stuff from the smaller, boutique Champagne producers to offer you. Prowein is the biggest and best organised wine event in the world, with 50 countries showing their wares and over 50,000 trade visitors from around the world coming to swirl, sniff and spit their way through 17 halls of magical, miraculous and mysterious refreshments. [caption id="attachment_1461" align="aligncenter" width="645"] Where to begin?[/caption] Matt spent 4 solid days in meetings