Four cities, more than 4,000 attendees, hundreds of opportunities to taste some of Italy’s greatest wines – the recently concluded Great Wines of Italy Asia event has become JamesSuckling.com’s biggest event and the most popular premium Italian wine event in the region.
The tastings, which took place from December 2-9 this year across four different cities, attracted 150 Italian wineries pouring some of their best wines released this year, from excellent 2014 Barolos to amazing 2013 Brunellos and great award-winning 2015 Super Tuscans.
“The Great Wines of Italy has been going for five years now and each year it gets better as the Asia market embraces the best wines of Italy,” says James Suckling, founder and editor of JamesSuckling.com. “We’re already planning our events next year and you can expect even more chances to taste amazing Italian wines and talk to the producers themselves while doing so.”
People from the wine trade and thousands of wine lovers packed the various venues in Beijing (Rosewood Hotel), Hong Kong (Four Seasons), Bangkok (Grand Hyatt) and Phuket (The Nai Harn).
Great Wines of Italy Grand Tasting Beijing
Best Italian wine of 2018
The Italian Wine of the Year 2018, Marchesi Antinori Toscana Solaia 2015, was crowned during an awards dinner at the
Rosewood Hotel in Beijing at the beginning of the tour, which included the premiere of JamesSuckling.com’s new documentary on the best pizza makers in Italy: Pizza Masters.
Australia’s award-winning recording artist Surahn Sidhu returned to cut some quality tunes and keep the crowd rockin’ with every sip. The DJ, who provides all the music at James Suckling’s Great Wines events, is currently collaborating with another renowned Australian act, Hayden James, for a Sony Music Entertainment project called “Happiness is Wealth”.
During the event James Suckling also presented a check to EcoDrive, a non-profit organization that wants to reduce the use of single-use plastics in Hong Kong.
The HKD$113,169.68 check presented to Emily Lam Ho, CEO of EcoDrive, was derived from the proceeds of trade tickets sold during the Great Wines of the World and Great Wines of Italy Hong Kong tastings.
Great Wines of Italy Grand Tasting Bangkok
Breaking records
James Suckling and his team have tasted more than 22,000 wines now in 2018, creating one of the largest collections of wine ratings this year of any wine media in the world. About 5,400 were Italian wines. “When I think back to when we started Great Wines of Italy in 2012 in Hong Kong, Italian wines were barely on the radar of fine wine drinkers in Asia. But today they know as much about Barolo and Brunello as Bordeaux,” Suckling adds.
Great Wines of Italy Grand Tasting Hong Kong
Great Wines of Italy Phuket Tasting Party
Looking ahead to next year
Great Wines of Italy 2019 tasting events
– December 2: Beijing Grand Tasting –
– December 4: Hong Kong Grand Tasting –
– December 6: Bangkok Grand Tasting –
– December 7: Phuket Tasting Party –
