Wine Tasting

This past weekend, all of the top wine producers in Turkey and other parts of the world (Napa was represented) had a 3 day convention at the Hilton Convention Center in Istanbul. Though not formally invited, Courtney and I had heard about the event and decided it might not be too difficult to gain entry. We had a good story prepared, and taking a page from the Wedding Crashers, we decided to be venture capitalists from New Hampshire. Agate Ventures, so printed on our name tags, was exploring import/export opportunities. Our psuedonyms, given to us by the woman printing nametags who had some difficulty with our handwriting, were Edward Acasbian and Courney Doggart.

The funny part about all of this was there were plenty of other English speaking people who didn't really have any reason to be at the convention beyond the free wine. We realized this after our second or third wine booth. We stayed for a couple of hours and sampled wine from all over Turkey, not too mention Italian, French, Georgian (which is very good), and Spanish wine. It was lots of fun and we met some interesting people. Wine is definitely on the up and up in Turkey.