Wine Openers

The week of VINO 2010, called by the Italian Wine Commission (and anyone else who experienced the Grand Tasting at the Hilton) as the largest Italian wine show outside of Italy, brought hundreds of producers together with …, well, not enough distributors and importers.

Don’t think the D and I folks weren’t there, they just weren’t buying much. The soft economy, a broad improvement in Italian wines and the difficulty of simply finding something new, something exciting enough to replace what already is out there, made it hard for the hopeful among the winemakers to go home with any sort of contract.

Paul Whitby and Eric Brunson of Dancing Bear Cellars in New York City spent the week tasting and re-tasting hundreds of wines, but at the end there weren’t any containers heading their way.

“Right now the market is saturated with wines and my stores aren’t buying,” Whitby said. “People just aren’t looking for stuff right now.”

Which is saddening when you meet dozens of wine produttori seeking some entry into the American market, even though the U.S. already absorbs 30 percent of the Italian import business, according the Italian Wine Commission.

“I make good wines, I just can’t get them in the States,” more than one winemaker lamented. So at the end of the week they pack up one more time, carrying a few bottles home and hoping the world economy improves by the time VinItaly rolls around in April. Maybe spring will be the chance to start over.