Our tour leaders, Saša Špiranec and Ivona Grgan, promised, in Istria, a wine and food gourmet paradise. Our first stop, dinner at Nenad Kukurin's restaurant Kukuriku on a terrace in the hills overlooking the bay at Opitija (www.kukuriku.hr), lived up to its billing. Istria is the heart-shaped peninsula sitting in the north-western corner of Croatia, and being so close to Italy, it’s not surprising to find a strong Italian influence here. Kukuriku is the epitome of sophistication, its food based on the principles of ‘mar e monte’, i.e. sea and mountain.

Miss Croatia, the personable and not wholly unpulchritudinous 21-year old Ivana Vasilj, is learning how to hold a wine glass. Like me, she is in Ilok in the far eastern corner of Croatia on the border with Serbia. I’m there for the wine while in her case it’s because she’s being sponsored by Juraj Mihaljević, owner of Principovac Wine Cellars, for this year’s Miss World contest in the US.

note position of wine glass

Tiramisu in smart Las Condes is the place to see and be seen on a Saturday night in Santiago. By nine, the trendy Italian hotspot is heaving with beautiful people washing down pizza and seafood with not quite so beautiful piscola, an unholy alliance of coke and pisco, along with beer, pisco sours, coke, Canada Dry, and the occasional bottle of Montes Cabernet Sauvignon or Casa Silva Carmenère.

I’ve just come back from Vinexpo, the big wine trade fair in Bordeaux, where I spent a surprisingly happy three days. Last time I went 6 years ago, I swore I wouldn’t go again because it was sweltering and the traffic was appalling, but this year I had a good reason to go, to present a seminar on Cahors and Argentinian malbec, and it was much better than I feared. Partly because the weather was good and the air-conditioning worked. Partly because I didn’t go to any of the fancy châteaux dinners, least of all the Château Lafite dinner on the Sunday night.

I'm at Vinexpo this week for the big Bordeaux wine fair, more of which in due course.

Vinexpo

There’s a nice story at Bloomberg by the American wine journalist Elin McCoy (author of the excellent book about Robert Parker: The Emperor of Wine) about the 2007 vintage Ports. According to her and many of those who’ve tasted them, 2007 looks to be a great year for vintage port, which was unanimously declared a vintage year by Portugal’s port houses in April. Port is one of those curious anomalies in which, like champagne, it’s the producer who declares whether the year is a vintage year or not.

The South West stretches from the Atlantic to the vibrant city of Toulouse – the capital of the region – and from the sunny foothills of the Pyrenees to the majesty of the Massif Central. In between, there are vineyards on the plains of the Béarn, along the river valleys of the Garonne, Lot and Tarn and on the rolling hills of Gaillac. The South-West has a unique storehouse of indigenous grape varieties and a broad spectrum of wine styles to go with them. Red grapes of character include tannat, malbec, négrette and fer servadou, the latter also known as pinenc and braucol.

Last week I spent mostly sniffing corks. Well, two actually. They were from Isole e Olena’s 2001 Cepparello and Costanti’s 2001 Brunello di Montalcino, both 100% sangiovese reds I’d bought and already enjoyed, so the anticipation was eager. There was no notable difference in the smell of the corks, but according to those who make a living out of serving wine, pulling the cork and sniffing it to make sure the wine isn’t corked, there should have been. Why? Because the Cepparello was horribly corked, while the Brunello was absolutely fine, better than fine in fact.

A recent survey conducted by research group Wine Intelligence shows that wine drinkers haven’t much of a clue about New World wine regions. As against 94% awareness of Bordeaux in the UK and 80% in the US, followed by Champagne (93% UK; 75% US), only 10% of US respondents had heard of the Barossa Valley, and 12% of Marlborough in the survey, which polled 2,000 regular wine drinkers in the US and a 1,000 in the UK.

Another year, another London Wine Trade Fair done and dusted. I don’t always look forward to the LWTF with the greatest anticipation. Excel in Docklands is not the most soulful venue on earth after all, although standing outside on the river on a sunny day can be pleasantly diverting.