Unexpected Takeaways from Wine Paris 2025

Courtesy of Wine and Stuff

Last week, I was in Paris at “Paris Wine ‘25.” I had the pleasure of meeting many people who devote their careers to growing, making, marketing, and selling wine. 

Although I am new to creating and marketing wine, I noticed that wine people differ from, say, the beer people or the e-commerce folks with whom I used to work. As I have said in the past, I was beer before becoming wine. 

Beer people tend to be a bit more stressed out. Perhaps it has something to do with the whole culture around consuming beer. As much as I love beer and its 5000-year history, beer has an element of competition. Comparing amounts of guzzled wine and the speed at which a liter can be quaffed can often be heard when you get more than two beer lovers together. 

People rarely say, “So, how much wine did you drink?”

Still a huge fan of beer, I drink much less than I used to simply because I don’t like the beer in the country where I currently reside. That is why I turned my attention to wine, and I am glad I did. Since it was my first international wine meeting, meeting many of the world’s grape growers and winemakers was a genuine — and stress-free — pleasure.

But despite the genteel feel of the whole event, a lot of wine was consumed! Although I am not a “spitter,” by the end of Day 1, I was spitting like a champ. My best estimate is that I tried around 300 wines, mostly Portuguese ones but also Moldavian, Armenian, Italian, Spanish, Austrian, and a few French wines. 

As I am ever seeking wines that are not in my “wine cellar” yet — this wine cellar is not one for my consumption but revolves around my goal of bringing the best mix of wines to the consumers in my target market — by the third hour of the wine fair, I stopped drinking wines willy-nilly and focused only the ones I still need. This means I stopped trying the excellent reds on offer and concentrated solely on whites interesting whites.

Portugal has fantastic whites, and having created a flavor profile by which I now judge all other white wines, I set off to find comparable whites in different countries. Of course, I am a fan of the whites from Friuli in Italy (although the reds from there are also excellent!), and who doesn’t like a Gruner Vetliner from Austria?

Well, I avoided the Gruner Veltliner because I am already sold on that excellent wine. I searched for some interesting, small-production grapes like the Welshriesling. I really enjoyed it and feel confident that one day, when I expand my wine cellar to beyond Portugal, that wine will find its place on my shelf.

Nonetheless, it was once again Portugal that caught me by surprise. Of the hundreds I tasted, a white wine from Vale de Lobos in the Tejo Region greatly surprised me. 100% Castelao, a red winegrape, Vale de Lobos presented it as a white wine.

Quinta da Devesa impressed me with a 100% Gouveio white wine. This is a typical Douro white wine grape, but it is almost impossible to find as a varietal and is usually used to blend with other grapes. 

Finally, a red spumante from Bairrada, known for sparkling wines in Portugal, caught me by surprise. Not one who consumes many sparkling wines, I asked for a second taste of this one and savored it instead of spit. Casa da Canto made this wine. 

Spitting

Update on the spitting in Paris. Folks, getting a mouthful of wine into the little spitoons the winemakers make available is not always so easy. The ones the exhibition hall seems to have rented to exhibitors had a very wide mouth, so if not careful, the wine could shoot up and out the sides. I managed nicely, except when tasting some delightful wines from a vineyard called Jordan in Austria.

Standing alone with the husband and wife team, I bent over nicely and let my wine fly, only to watch it shoot up and spray their nicely presented menu board, pretty much ruining it. Fortunately, it was the last hours of the exhibition, but I got the sense that the wife of the team was not a fan of sloppiness. I apologized many times, and we parted ways with a promise that I would visit them.

They had a beautiful Gruner Veltliner sparkling wine!

By the way, the Chianti Classico people gave tasters individual cups for spitting — wasteful but convenient.

Next stop, Miami in May!