One more show is over, probably the one we enjoyed the most this year - The Bristol Wine and Food Fair 2009. Very well organised, lovely people and good company! It was so busy that I didnt even manage to take enough pictures from there, yet below are a few with my fellow ASDW (Association of Small Direct Merchants) members - Lafayette’s Wines and Hyde Park Wines with whom we had a great laugh. Despite the rain that we had most of the Saturday, it was quite a successful show and we will probably more than certain do it again next year.

From the 18th to 21st of June this year, for four full days, we indulged the Londoners in Regents Park to our exquisite wines matching the foods of the top London restaurants.  At the same time we celebrated the introduction of the new wines from Crama Oprisor, Ptujska Klet, Cricova and Casal da Coelheira wineries.  It was enchanting to learn that in our portfolio there was a wine for every palate and all our wines were appreciated in full. The ultimate tasting experience was also complimented by our sparkling Brut de Rezerva from Cricova, which was a huge success, with many of those who tasted it, having preferred it to some other medal winning champagnes. Bring it on baby!

Below we took a few pictures from the show, also nicknamed ‘The world’s greatest restaurant festival’. Enjoy and share.

They say – better late than never. So due to the workload we had for the past few months, I couldn’t find much time to write anything new, yet quite a lot of new stuff happened which I will write about over the next few months. I will start with the London International Wine Fair 2009, which according to statistics was slightly less attended than last year’s show, yet the quality of visitors was higher than ever they say (more visitors turned up more than just in one day). And I have been a contributor to that fact too actually. Initially I had in plans to attend just on the day of opening, check the Decanter competition results out, see a few producers and make myself out. Well, said is not enough.
I didn’t get too much disappointed that our Cricova Gratiesti just got a commended award, as it was the only wine from Moldova to win something and at the end of the day, this is not a wine that would go well without a dessert to it, so I forgave the judges and moved on to check what was interesting to taste. Firstly I made my way into the Wine Gang’s top 100 wines. There were several interesting ones I liked …… including the Leon Stolarski ones – great job he does. A lot of those who were doing the same thing as me seemed to have a genuine interest in wines, yet I had to see a few producers which we agreed in advance to meet, so I couldn’t taste them all 100 wines as you can imagine…
Anyway, an old Moldavian proverb says – ‘Too much talk is one’s poverty’, so I wont go into details as to what I did and who I saw, but better show a few pictures from the show for your eyes delight.

Last month I had the pleasure in attending two tastings - Georgian wine tasting and Hungarian wine tasting. The first one was quite small organised at the Royal Horticultural Conference Centre in London, a short walk from Victoria. The second one was at One London Wall, Plasterers Hall. Both these tastings have been organised with some sort of government support as far as I understood from the winemakers and interestingly enough, they were just a few days apart from each over. Hard work these wine tastings are I must say and that is not a joke. I cant imagine the professional judges and wine masters that have to taste a lot of wines every day. For a few days after each tasting my palate was destroyed - everything just didn’t taste as it should have tasted.

Oh well, I probably shouldn’t complain that much, but lay down my impressions of the tastings themselves.

The Georgian wine tasting had about 8 different producers and the majority of them represented indigenous grape variety wines - with a focus on Saperavi for the reds and Tsinandali for the whites. Tsinandali is a cuvée of Rkatsiteli and Mtsvane. I cant say that I am a big fan of Saperavi though as its a bit too peppery for my taste, yet that is just my personal opinion. The Tsindali or even the pure Mtsvane are more interesting and I could have them on any sunny day - floral and aromatic. Rkatsiteli is an interesting grape that grows well in Moldova too, out of which is made the Cricova Gratiesti dessert wine that is getting increasingly more and more attention. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me, so no pictures from the event, but if I am to describe in a few words it as a whole - it could have been organised better.

The Hungarian wine tasting on the other hand was a much bigger and very well organised event with seminars and talks by experts, including Caroline Gilby MW.

Luckily this time, I was armed with my camera, so I took a few shots as you can see below.

Yesterday, 25th of March 2009, took place the ASDW Wine Tasting at Atlas Pub in Fulham, near Earls Court where we had 6 Cricova wines for press and trade tasting in the day time and for the general invite only public in the evening.

Actually we had 6 wines and one sparkling.

Yep - thats right - one Cricova ‘méthode traditionnelle’ Vintage Brut that I received a few days ago from Cricova to sample with the view to import it. I tasted this vintage on Monday evening with my coleague Dmitriy and the decision has been instantly made to add it to our portfolio. Yet, as we like to share the finer joys of life, I brought a bottle with me at the Atlas.

Without going into too much talking, I will just publish a few pictures I managed to take from the event.

We were 12 companies, each representing their wines with dedication and passion as you can see and on overal it was a fun event and I look forward to see some press coverage and orders

Following our presence at the Wine+ Trade Show, we had been approached to sponsor the Country Living Magazine Gala Evening and exhibit/organise wine tasting at the fair. It didn’t take us much hesitation to accept the offer and there we were - last week busy at the fair.

The show took place at the London Business Design Centre in Islington lasting 5 days between 11th and 15th of March with some 20-30k visitors attended. On the day one, there was this Gala Evening where £4 from each ticket sold was donated to charity as well as each visitor could serve a glass of Cricova wine. The wines have been received very well by the general public and I managed to take a few pictures from the evening.

I had the opportunity this year to visit ExpoVin Moldova 2009 held at the National Exhibition Centre between 18-21 Feb. ExpoVin Moldova is an annual event for the wine industry that is attended by everyone who has or wants to have anything to do with Moldavian wine industry - winemakers, cork producers, packaging and labeling companies etc.

As every other exhibition, ExpoVin Moldova this year didn’t enjoy the usual demand even though the Moldavian politicians strongly argue (elections soon will change that) that Moldova hasn’t been affected by the credit crunch. The real life situation is that the winemakers struggle - a few key players weren’t present, so the show was not what it used to be. Still, the companies that could make it, had beautiful stands as well as a few nice looking … girls… Well, a picture does a thousand words, so enjoy them below:

There aren’t very many Eastern European Restaurants in the UK and from the lot, just a handful are worth any attention to be honest. Over the past few months I have been visiting quite a few of those restaurants as part of my new job of promoting Cricova Wine, so this particular place based in North London caught my attention due to its traditional pure Romanian interior. The place used to be an English pub before by the looks of it, so I just thought - interesting design and arrangement, but I will check the online reviews what people say about its food etc.

What surprised me the most is the fact the place doesn’t even have a website. And looking for online reviews didn’t bring much success unfortunately either, so we decided to pay a visit to The Britannia and check it out for ourselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

I will start from the beginning. A few months ago I attended the wine show in London, which I will admit was quite an enjoyable experience. My wife and I even signed up for OZ Clarke’s ’seminar’ on Portuguese wines. I remember it to date - his speech really made me want go to Portugal and drink only vinho verde! It was a fun and ‘different’ type of seminar, following which I managed to take a picture of my wife with Mr Clarke. Anyway, tasting as you can expect may get you influenced by alcohol, so i don’t quite remember in detail but we ended with the Food and Travel magazine subscription in the bag! Oh well I said - we like to travel, so let it be…

Apparently our subscription came with 2 tickets to the great Australian Wine experience 2009 worth £25 each, which I found out only in December about. To take advantage of this offer, all I had to do is send an email and request my 2 tickets! So there I was - end of January with 2 tickets for the tasting at Emirates Stadium (Arsenal). My wife was busy with her coursework(poor student) plus she didn’t feel that well, so gave me the express permission to go without her. My friend Dusan gladly accepted the invitation and at around 7pm we were making the most of our presence at the tasting. Read the rest of this entry »

I did anticipate serious obstacles before starting up… No, put it another way - I didn’t expect anyone with open hands to say - come Vadim, come Cricova - we have been waiting for you so long now! There, the top shelves in our supermarkets are empty and we didnt know what to fill them with

Joking aside, I knew what I am getting myself into… And I knew it wasn’t just me the first to try to establish the Moldavian Wines in the UK. There were attempts to do that since 1992 and for one reason or another, the world still doesn’t know where on earth is Moldova and what kind of wine does it do.

I have been following the scene quite closely since 2001 and I knew when the time is right, I will do it. Actually, while at uni, I took a module called Entrepreneurship and as part of it, we had to write a business plan and present it… Well, believe it or not, my plan was about Cricova wines… Yep and that was over 5 years ago. Ok, I have been busy since then with computers, however I still kept myself up to date as to who does what.

So what do I have so special to make it a success that no one could do it before me?..

Some of you might expect an arrogant answer, but no, it is nothing to do with me, it has to do with the actual product - THE WINE! Before elaborating any further I will give you the quick picture of the Moldavian Wine Market. Read the rest of this entry »