From April 8-10, this year, and for 43 before, more than 4300 exhibitors, mostly Italian wine producers, congregate in Verona, Italy to display their wares and to invite any and all to come sample their wines. This wine fair is the meeting place for buyers, agents, publicists, marketers, dealers, regulators, wine enthusiasts, sommeliers, and anyone who pays the admission.
The main activity here is to meet with the staffs of the exhibiting cantinas, discuss their products and sample the wines. The sampling is most properly done by tasting a mouthful or two, and the spitting out the contents into a “spit bucket”. The professionals do this all the day discussing years, and vintages, making notes and carrying out their business in the wine trade.
Not all the wine is wasted, however, and as the work day ends, the atmosphere becomes more convivial, made more so by those who come, and many do, out of their love of wine. Near the days end is a good time really get to appreciate the Italian wine industry . It is truly both historic and huge. Most of the exhibitors usually present 4 or 5 different wines they market.
This means that there are over twenty thousand different wines available for sampling. If you sampled 5 or 6 wines an hour for 8 of the hours of the 5 days of the wine fair for a total of 250 to 300 samplings tops, you would have to go for 70 years to do them all, and doesn’t take care of the changes in the products over the years!