Carrefour Spring Wine Fair

If you live in Shanghai and like to drink wine, go visit the Carrefour Spring Wine Fair! Carrefour organizes this event twice a year (in spring & autumn) in its basement and I normally buy quite some bottles there. Carrefour has a very decent collection of wines in its store, but the wine fair has a lot more wines and they are at least 20% cheaper. Many have 3-for-4 or 5-for-6 deals and on every single bottle you get an additional 20% discount upon check-out. As usual Carrefour delivers home for free, but you will have to wait about a week before they deliver.

It’s also a good way to get a free wine tasting. I went there on Saturday night around 9:30 PM and tasted about 8 different wines. You can taste almost everything, from simple AOC’s to Grand Cru’s, and also lots of New World wines. I am a fan of New Zealand wines and managed to stock up on some nice Sauvignon Blancs after tasting and comparing several of them.

One French employee noticed I had a number of decent wines in my shopping cart already and took me on a tasting tour of wines she personally liked best. She let me taste the combination of cabernet sauvignon and viognier for example (I didn’t even know this existed) and I loved it. Of course I bought a few bottles right away! Excellent service Carrefour.

One person literally stumbled out of the store after trying too many wines, his face and eyes complete red. The ‘problem’ is that you have to drink the wines, you cannot spit them out like during a regular tasting. It’s probably good I drove to the store myself instead of asking my driver, so I had to stop myself from trying out too many new wines!

The Wine Fair will last until April 26 in the Gubei store and in the Lianyang store (Thumb Plaza). This Friday and Saturday the Lianyang store will have its wine party. If you want to make sure you get in send an email to shirley_hexiaoqing@carrefour.com for an invitation.

By the way, in case someone from Carrefour reads this, next time get a better English proof reader for your wine brochure, see here why.