IWC Dinner, 16th July 2015
20th July 2015
As promised, more on the IWC dinner where SVS was awarded the Specialist Wine Merchant for Chile award. It was quite an evening. Much as I don't want to bite the hand that awards me, the inner old fart in me had some issues. OK, I can just about cope with the disco lights and the incessant, pounding pop music (does this have to punctuate everything now, from international cricket downwards?). BUT... the dinner. If you are going to charge 200 quid a ticket, and put bottles of trophy or gold medal-winning wines on each table, you must serve decent food. But what did we get? OK, I didn't see the crib sheet, but what I appeared to be served was a roundel of Shippam's meat paste with pickled vegetables; followed by some dark-skinned fish in sweetish teriyaki sauce. So the august organisers of an event celebrating the world's wines managed to come up with one course dominated by vinegar and one by sugar...both well-known wine-destroyers. No red meat, aaargh....A real shame, as it was in many ways a jolly occasion with some top merchants and producers there. The best dressed group were the Japanese, there in force for sake awards, but I also loved coming across the couple in the photo, winner of the Taiwan Fortified Trophy (yes, there's a big world out there....)