I escaped to Toronto this weekend. My basic plan was to get away, do some shopping, wander the neighbourhoods and be anonymous for a bit. I love Toronto… I probably should have looked for a job there when I was going into public accounting, but I wanted a smaller firm and more advancement opportunities, so I chose Calgary. I know that when I moved to Ottawa, it was because I viewed it as more approachable than Toronto and I had a line on a job here… but it’s still close enough (well, five hours) that I can escape when I really need to.
And this weekend, I really needed to. Even though I should have been studying for my wine tasting final exam.
I had originally been planning on heading to Montreal, however it was Grey Cup weekend. So I chose Toronto. And when I checked to see what was going on in Toronto, it was the Gourmet Food & Wine Expo. A celebration of food and wine. I could live with that.
This expo was very similar to the one in Ottawa I attended a couple of weeks ago. Only more expensive! There were a few options to buy your admission. You could do it in advance, over ticketmaster, for $15 + whatever fees Ticketmaster was charging. Admission could also be bought at the door, for $15. There were coupons available that let you save $3 off that $15 admission. There were also two for one coupons floating around out there to also help you save money on admission.
I arrived at the Convention Centre – I had forgotten how big it was – and finally found the correct exhibition hall. The line to buy admission tickets was pretty massive, so I headed to an “automated” ticketbooth, realizing I would also be forfeiting my $3 discount. I was ok with that. Unfortunately, the machine was charging $1 convenience fee. Ughhhhhh.
Coat check, $2.50.
Sample tickets? $1 each, sold in books of 20. So you could either buy $20 or $40. No refunds on unused tickets!
I also started to compare the wine prices. Catena Alta, for example, which is a $60.95 bottle of malbec from the Catena winery, was going for 8 sample tickets at the Ottawa show, which worked out to $4/sample. At the Argentina booth in Toronto, it was going for 6 tickets, which was $6/sample. At the Vintages booth in Toronto, it was pouring for 5 tickets, or $5/sample. Sheesh!
I also found even less people willing to talk wine in Toronto. I had a nice chat with a woman about D’Arenberg wines, as I was looking for some Dead Arm to sample. The rest of the crowd was pretty dead. I decided to track down some Northern Rhone wines as France was the feature country of the Expo this year… and I only found one. It was 3 or 4 samples and nowhere near as delicious at the one I had tried in class.
There were a few other features offered at this expo, however, that Ottawa didn’t have. There was something called Connoisseur’s Corner, where for 5 tickets ($5), one could attend a tasting seminar hosted by the International Wine Educator’s Guild (IWEG). They had them every hour and the first forty people could attend – which meant that if you wanted to get in, you had to be there half an hour early. Had I arrived earlier and wanted to kill more time, I would have gone, but it was basically a commitment of over an hour. There was one I saw going on which was called “For the Palate, for the Planet” when I walked by – and the presenter had an entire table of Tetra Pak wines laid out in front of her. I was very glad I hadn’t waited half an hour for Tetra pak wines.
The food was delicious, however, and a lot easier to find than in Ottawa. I had some beef samples, a prime rib sandwich, some cheese samples… there was a cheese platter available that looked delicious, but it was 6 tickets and I couldn’t bear to part with that many. If someone wanted to do some shopping, however, there were lots of great deals available on cheeses, dips, sauces, etc. There was even a well stocked LCBO on site.
Would I go again? Probably not. Of course, it’s unlikely that I’ll randomly be in Toronto the same time as this wine show again. I was there mid-afternoon on Saturday and the place was packed. I also didn’t find that the value was there – although now the Ottawa show seems like a total bargain. I’ve come to the conclusion that I definitely prefer the wine show where you pay $50 to get in and can drink/eat all night without shelling out anymore money. I miss the Roundup Centre (this is the main venue for wine shows in Calgary)!
