This previous weekend, with views of Manhattan made moody by spring rains, over 500 wine lovers ascended the 60 tales to Manhatta for the fourth annual New York Wonderful Wine Encounter.
This 12 months’s Encounter featured sell-out masterclasses from Biondi-Santi, a particular retrospective on aged Veuve Clicquot, and Rioja’s high wines.
Beginning the morning with Champagne, winemaker and director of R&D at Veuve Clicquot, Gaëlle Goossens, and Decanter’s Natalie Earl led the tasting of seven completely different vintages. Attendees have been provided actual treats, together with Veuve Grande Dame bottlings from 1996, 1993 and 1990, to reveal the ageability of the traditional cuvée.
Biondi-Santi’s director of winemaking, Federico Radi, and Decanter’s Tina Gellie led friends by some very particular bottles of this Brunello icon, together with their Riserva Brunellos from 1988 and 1975. Among the many very first names in Sangiovese, the Brunellos of Biondi-Santi are a real masterclass in one of many world’s very particular wines.
Rioja was the identify on everybody’s lips for the day, from the masterclass celebrating the DOCa’s 100 years with Grasp Sommelier Jonathan Eicholz and Decanter’s Ines Salpico, to the particular Rioja bar, with some unbelievable choices with loads of age and a particular lunch menu paired with the spectacular buffet placed on by Manhatta’s culinary group.
Rioja Bar and Featured Area for DFWE 2025. Credit score: Alfonso Lozano Movies
Our Decanter editorial group will present intensive protection over the following few days of every of the masterclasses.
Whereas attendees have been queuing for the early masterclass, our first VIP Editor’s Lunches have been underway with a Champagne toast, adopted by unique wines from choose winemakers for our unique friends. The small teams have been handled to philosophical conversations on the rising magnificence of North American Pinot Noir and timeless Napa icons that included magnums of Cabernet from the Nineties, Sonoma Coast Pinot rarities and a mini-masterclass in Niagara’s dynamic terroir from winemaker Thomas Bachelder. All of it tied with a bow that included a Decanter-only inside scoop from our Napa correspondent, Jonathan Cristaldi, and yours really.
On the Grand Tasting ground, friends have been entertained by 50 producers all pouring particular cuvées because the rain lashed the floor-to-ceiling glass with dizzying views of Manhattan.
Winemaker Trey Fletcher, of Santa Barbara’s founding Sanford & Benedict, was pouring some implausible Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from this coastal area, and he was actually impressed with the calibre of friends at his first DFWE. ‘The questions from the friends are nice. They’re clearly right here to study, not simply drink wine, a lot of them are correctly tasting and spitting, which makes this a really distinctive crowd,’ Fletcher mentioned.
Spotlight wines on the day included the 2015 Cristom, Louise Winery Pinot Noir, which confirmed Oregon’s ageability; a 2010 bottling of Vérité’s La Joie and a really spectacular Barolo from Damilano, their Cannubi Riserva, ‘1752.’
Visitors discovered lots to be enthusiastic about among the many 50 producers, the intensive choices from the DWWA award-winning bar, and a deep number of Rioja wines into the early night.
Because the clouds parted and rays of solar got here to finish the day, wine lovers left content material and counting the times to the DFWE in 2026.
Credit score: Alfonso Lozano Movies
