2016 New York Wine Experience

A star-studded celebration of wine, friendship and song.

- Mitch Frank

The crowd of seminar-goers inside the ballroom had come to taste wine. They had not counted on a performance by a musical legend. But not one of the guests at Wine Spectator’s New York Wine Experience objected when Sting walked out on stage, pulled up a stool and began plucking an arpeggio on his guitar.

“Just a castaway, an island lost at sea-o,” Sting sang out in a soul-stirring rendition of his hit “Message in a Bottle.” “Another lonely day, no one here but me-o.”

The 36th annual Wine Experience was packed with such surprises. And it was far from lonely. For three days in October, more than 5,000 guests— vintners, wine merchants, consumers, even the Tuscan winery owner who once played bass in the Police—came to the Times Square Marriott Marquis in the heart of New York City to celebrate their shared passion for wine. (Sting accompanied his wife, Trudie Styler, as she presented their Italian wine, the Il Palagio Toscana Sister Moon 2011.)

The weekend packed in two evenings of Grand Tastings, 15 seminars, several wine-paired meals and a black-tie Champagne reception and awards banquet featuring a performance by Huey Lewis and the News, all in 54 hours. More than 350 wines were poured from 24,264 bottles into more than 65,000 glasses.

It was an opportunity to taste the incredible quality and diversity of today’s wine world. It was also a chance to see old friends, make new ones and celebrate life. And it was a birthday party: Wine Spectator turned 40 this year. Many guests spoke of how the magazine has grown since 1976— and how America’s wine culture itself has flourished in these four decades.