(Thorsten Kogge / Editorial Team / Pic: Messe Karlsruhe / Animation: rumwayml)
No one in the world was waiting for it. Apart from a few people in and around Karlsruhe – EUROVINO, which has only just come to an end.
Another wine fair? In a market that already has more dates than good arguments? At first, it sounds like one of those ideas born in Excel spreadsheets – and which would have been better left there. But then you find yourself in Karlsruhe. In one hall. Just one. And you begin to suspect that this is precisely the point. And that it is going to be a good, relaxed walk around.
EUROVINO is perhaps the first wine fair in years that does not want to be bigger than it is. Around 500 exhibitors, no fantasies of global omnipotence, no frantic ticking off of hall plans. Instead: an overview. Concentration – and two or three pleasant follow-ups in the evening. And – almost disconcertingly – time. Time for conversations that last longer than two minutes. Time for wines that do not get lost in the flow. Time for encounters that do not end in the crush.
You walk through this hall and realise fairly quickly: this is not about size, but proximity. A small estate from the Palatinate, a few steps further on a Burgundian trading house, then Moselle, Alsace, Italy again. Europe, condensed to walking distance. No continent-hopping, but a deliberately chosen focus. Super!
That Karlsruhe of all places should give this fair a home is almost subversive. No metropolis, no glamour, no artificial exaggeration. Instead, proximity to Baden, the Palatinate, Alsace and Württemberg – and winegrowers who can travel here without logistical madness. No hotel prices that resemble stock-market quotations. No fair that financially punishes its guests.
Organised by Messe Karlsruhe, the whole thing feels like a counterpoint to the overblown trade-fair circuit of recent years: smaller, more European, more controlled. One might almost say – sensible. A word that was long considered an insult in the wine business.
And what is this? That there in the glass?
A surprising amount of substance. The sparkling wines, for example, show how widely quality has spread by now. I drink an Arthur Metz Crémant d’Alsace – fresh, floral, with a mineral drive – almost dangerously quickly. Nyetimber, the premium “Champagne” from England, once again demonstrates that Champagne no longer has sole control over the interpretation of great sparkling wines.
Germany is catching up too, and once again remarkably seriously. Nik Weis and Bassermann-Jordan produce Sekt that is no longer conceived as a by-product. The “Cuvée Clara” from Nik Weis (approx. €22): precise, modern, with exactly the balance that a younger audience is looking for, without being underchallenged.
And then there are those moments that are really why one goes to fairs – but which one often no longer experiences: discoveries!
Tim Thesen from the Moselle, for example. Hardly anyone knows him, but the wines are there with a self-assurance that is disconcerting. Old vines, clear lines, prices that seem almost like a mistake – does everything really have to be this cheap? Unfortunately yes, because German consumers no longer want to pay more for wines from steep sites than for machine-harvested wines from flat sites.
Or Gut Hermannsberg, where the “7 Terroirs” Riesling shows that entry level is a relative term today. Structure, spice, depth – and without the heaviness one used to have to accept in return.
France delivers as strongly as expected. But here too, without much fuss. Louis Latour, Chartron et Trébuchet, Magnien – solid, present, accessible. And Alsace, once again, as the quiet winner: Emile Beyer, Demeter, Pfersigberg Grand Cru – a wine full of the greatness attributed to it.
EUROVINO is not a grand stage. And that is precisely its ace in the trade-fair poker game.
It is a fair for people who actually work with wine – or want to drink it seriously. No staggering crowd in search of the next open bottle.
Instead: concentration. And measure – a lost virtue.