Decanter World Wine AwardsSpain's Vinoble cancelled
- Thursday 22 March 2012
The 2012 edition of the Jerez fair and conference was originally scheduled for 3-5 June. Discussions about the future continue though no clear date for another Vinoble has been set.
The city of Jerez, which hosts the fair, announced it could no longer afford its portion of the funding and so would have to cancel.
Earlier editions had been supported by the Andalusian government, to the tune of €120,000 in 2010.
The cancellation was ‘a matter of common sense and responsibility…given the delicate situation of the municipal coffers, and the international wine market, an element that has complicated the situation further,’ a spokesman said.
Founded in 1998, the last edition in 2010 attracted 65 exhibitors and approximately 3,000 attendees.
During the fair there were demonstrations by unemployed groups protesting that, in the face of economic uncertainty, the expense was unacceptable.
In 2010 Vinoble was organised by the Wine Academy of Spain. A new company, Team Navazos, had been retained to organise the eighth edition but the city's budget ended up 8% lower than the fee stipulated in the contract proposal.
Have your say!
Lalau
March 25 10:35
Re Equipo Navazos: this is no new company (quote):
It all began in December 2005, when a group of Sherry lovers including Jesus Barquin, a lawyer and director of the Andalusian Institute and a renowned food and drink critic, along with Eduardo Ojeda, director of Grupo Estevez, owners of Bodega Valdespino and the La Guita sherry brand, were visiting a small and historic bodega of Miguel Sanchez Ayala in Sanlucar. It was here that they discovered 65 butts of exceptionally fine old Amontillado, which had languished unsold for around twenty years. They decided to rescue this rare old wine. They chose the name Equipo Navazos (Team Navazos) and named this first bottling ‘La Bota de Amontillado Navazos’. By 2007 these limited edition bottlings had begun to cause quite a stir in the rarefied world of sherries and have been garnering glowing reviews ever since.
Dean Stergides
March 23 11:12
Vinoble is a victim of the city of Jerez's illusions of grandeur.
As an idea Vinoble is a great concept: the problem with sweet wines is that although consumers love them, they don't actually buy them! Mostly, they have trouble integrating them into their everyday consumer habits. So, an event that familiarizes them with sweet wines is a great idea and it is no accident that Vinoble did have the support of all major sweet wine producing areas from around the globe.
However, a better idea, in my opinion, would be for Vinoble to travel around the world, once a year or once every two years, from great city to great city, so as to familiarize the maximum number of consumers with sweet wines. I am sure many producers would seize the opportunity to exhibit in New York, in London, in Milan, in Rio etc, if the event was well-organized, as was, in fact, the case with Vinoble in Jerez. However, the city of Jerez was against the idea, as far as I know, of letting the exhibition go elsewhere. But holding it in Jerez all the time is an untenable proposition and the 3.000 visitors number is misleading. In fact, the only buyers attending the fair were the ones "imported" by the organizers (no more than 300 people) all the rest one must suppose are local consumers, who don't really interest international exhibitors. Last but not least, Jerez is just too far away and off the beaten track to become the one and only venue for such an event (which could arguably have been the case should it have been Paris or London).
John Radford
March 23 10:07
Really sorry to hear about this - it was always an excellent show, with some surprising wines. I remember a late-harvest Txakoli, a folie de Janvier ice-wine from Gaillac, an ice-cider from Canada: always something new. Given the state of the Spanish economy, however, it is understandable. I hope they'll be back next time.