On a bone-cold day in January we made our annual pilgrimage to the Boston Wine Expo to soak up the bounty of warmer climates. With hundreds of producers and thousands of wines to sample, you have to pick your targets carefully. Spend too much time at the Italian pavilion and you might be snockered before checking out Spain or New Zealand.  Following our successful “divide and conquer” strategy, Gary and Lisa split up during the “for the trade” hours of 11 am – 1 pm and headed to the producers or countries we were most anxious to explore. Gary gravitated towards Italy, Spain and Argentina while Lisa went down under to Australia and New Zealand and then back to our hemisphere to Chile.

Those pre-show tasting hours are precious; once the hordes come in at 1 you get stampeded by wannabe “vinophiles” (overheard at the Peachy Canyon table—Gary did not have the heart to correct them.) Speaking of hordes—-there were less of them this year thanks to the recession. Fewer boutique and small-region exhibitors too (Long Island was MIA for the first time in memory.) And many of the better-known wineries left the good stuff home and poured mostly plonk. Still, we uncovered some gems amid the ordinary offerings, many under $20.

Before we review our Best in Show (see Chart, below), a few snarky words from Gary about Spain and Greece.  (To our dear friends Raul and Helen…your home countries make marvelous wine, we just didn’t find much at the Expo.  No nasty comments, please!)

Spain Navarra Pavilion
The Kingdom of Navarra dropped a ton of money at the Expo: full-page ad in the program; tasting seminars; and an enormous Pavilion with 21 wine producers. To be honest, most of the wines we tasted in this pavilion should have had the tent fall down on them.  The red wines mostly tasted odd with chemical aftertaste, vinegar overtones, and a sour-alum finish (yes, 'ouch!').  These wines were generally just too young to be tasted.

Fortunately, at the periphery of the Pavilion we were introduced to the winemaker/owner of Bodegas Tandem.  The 2004 Tandem Macula  is a big wine with wound-up tannins, oak, leather and deep plum overtones that has a long finish. While the 2004 is not quite ready for primetime, this $28 beauty (70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot) will make an excellent addition to anyone's cellar (and it does need to lay down for a minimum of 6 months).  We note that fellow wine bloggers at Snooth.com rated the 2003 Macula three out of five goblets. We concur as we were able to sample the 2003 at the show.  The 2004 is way better and we rate it as an excellent value.

Wines of Greece
The red wines featured from Greece were also a grand disappointment with most reminding us of grape juice mixed with red wine vinegar.  The heavy overtones of acetone on the palate (just imagining what acetone tastes like) made us run from this section of the show floor.