100’s of Global Sparkling Wines Showcased at Glass of Bubbly tasting 2017

It’s Spring time and that can only mean there’s some great annual tastings hitting the world of wine in London and Monday 24th of April it was the turn of the Glass of Bubbly International Champagne & Sparkling Wine Trade tasting and launch of the International Summit at Le Meridien Piccadilly Hotel, London. Months of preparations and planning led to what was our biggest tasting yet both in exhibitors and their wines and those industry professionals coming through the doors to taste the wines. On the day over 650 people visited to taste the global sparkling wines on show to include many English Sparkling Wines and Champagne and those from Prosecco region, Franciacorta, Cava, Croatia, Slovenia, Austria, Portugal, Germany, Argentina, New Zealand and more.

There is no greater feeling, when you are organising events, to stand back and see smiling faces, people showcasing their products and people busy networking and certainly at the Glass of Bubbly there was no shortage of any of this happening. People had flown in to attend from all over the world to taste the wines on show and we had many different press and trade to include chefs, sommeliers, wine buyers, hotel and bar owners, TV personalities, food writers, lifestyle journalists, wine writers and more.

It was also a day full of seminars as the Glass of Bubbly Annual Champagne & Sparkling Wine Summit was launched and speakers held talks from the importance of English terroir to central European sparkling wines with speakers to include Neil Phillips, Corinne Seely and Nicholas Faith. Each seminar was well attended and this will now be a feature of the Glass of Bubbly annual tasting going forward.

We decided to officially launch the Glass of Bubbly awards at our annual tasting where ‘The World’s Finest Glass of Bubbly‘ awards for 2017 along with some of our sponsors to include Carynx, ADI Trading, Virgin Wines and The Player Magazine were present. The idea of a new style of awards not only rewarding gold winning wines within the industry, but also externally with international recognition from a collection of media and press outlets supporting the concept was warmly received and over 30 applications to enter was received to include Champagne, English Sparkling Wine and Cava.

The official handing over ‘The World’s Finest Glass of Bubbly’ main trophy donated by Carynx to Christopher Walkey, founder of Glass of Bubbly

The World’s Finest Glass of Bubbly Awards will take place in October 2017 with two/three days of judging from leading and experienced wine judges and there will be a black tie awards evening at Marriot County Hall in Westminster who are one of the main sponsors for the awards.

One big draw back in hosting an international tasting event is that you never really get a chance to taste many of the wines you have worked hard to have on show as you are always checking on wine glasses, spittoons, bottles in the free pour area and spending time with people for interviews and friendly chats. So, even though there were 100’s of wines I never tasted, I did note a couple of great tasters including the rosé from No.1 Family Estate, The Champagne Castelnau vintage 2003 and the quite unique sparkling mulled wine from Finndeli.