I stopped by 801 Chop House early yesterday to see if the World Wine Tour was really serving more than 300 wines. It was. The tour opened to the public at 5:30 p.m. but from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. was an industry-only event that resembled a street market, not a hoity-toity wine tasting. In each and every corner of the massive steakhouse was the cacophony of deals being done and great wine being poured.
I talked with wine producers from Argentina to New Zealand -- as well as to a former Goldman Sachs employee who had been recently laid off and was now working for his wine-producer brother.
It was
interesting to hear people speak of wine not in flowery
terms but in hard-sell terms. "This would be a great wine by the glass
because it's a big enough zin to hold up to a steak and yet it's sweet
enough that chicks are going be all over it," a Californian producer
told me before realizing I wasn't there to buy.
Every wine
distributor I talked to said it was their first time in Kansas City. Most had arrived the night before. "Is the weather always this nice?" I heard one lady ask a server. I bit my tongue.
The Frenchman Nicolas Boissonneau
haven't been in the country long. "I've met a lot of nice
people in America. It's an adjustment because everything is grape. This
wine is by grape. In France, wine is by area... America
has lots more space but no areas. Everything's bigger. Big car. Big store. And a lot
of barbecue." Boissonneau is keeping a blog of his adventures, called Nicolas Discovers America. I wanted to ask him more questions about the cultural divide between France and America but he had moved on to an actual client who was ready to deal.
Other
distributors have been doing this their entire
life. "My parents bought land in Sonoma when I was young and after I
graduated high school, I started helping at the winery," said Victor Trentadue, who
runs his family's business -- Trentadue Winery -- and said he does more
trade shows like the World Wine Tour than he can count. "It's our winery's 40th anniversary. In 40 years my kids will be running the business and hopefully I'll be retired. Until then, here I am."
For David Quam, the guy from Goldman Sachs, it was only his third tasting. His brother Eric started
a wine import company dealing with German wines seven years ago. When he was laid off after 15 years at Goldman Sachs, Quam said, he didn't get a golden parachute. "I wasn't a banker and they outsourced my job. My brother said, 'Hey you're unemployed, come work for me.'" Quam
said he's still trying to get the feel for wine shows, since, he said, the wine business is nothing like Wall Street.
Every wine I tasted was good, even if I couldn't taste most of them
because my palate was burnt out after the first seven samples. My
tastebuds may have lasted only 20 minutes, but I thoroughly enjoyed the
two hours of conversation with South Americans, Europeans and Aussies.
When World Wine Tour comes back to Kansas City two years from now, go for the wine but stay for the cultural experience.
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