Wine fairs are great for discovering new bottles, meeting winemakers and tasting styles you would probably never order by the glass.
They are also a very easy place to lose track of what you actually like.
After ten, fifteen or twenty pours, everything starts blending together. This is especially true at a natural wine fair, where you might move from a crisp white to pét-nat, skin-contact wine, something cloudy and aromatic, then a light red — all within half an hour.
The answer isn't to taste more. It's to taste smarter.
Here’s how to make a wine fair actually useful.
1. Eat before you start
Simple, but important.
Have a proper meal before the fair and keep drinking water throughout. You're there to taste wine, not test your alcohol tolerance.
If spittoons are available, use them. Even a small pour adds up quickly when you're tasting dozens of wines.
Also skip strong perfume or fragrance. It makes tasting harder for you — and everyone standing next to you.
2. Don't start with whatever looks most exciting
That big orange wine or deep red might be calling your name, but give your palate a chance.
A practical tasting order is:
Sparkling / Pét-Nat → Fresh White → Skin-Contact / Orange → Light Red → Fuller Red
It doesn't need to be rigid. Natural wines don't always fit neatly into conventional categories.
But moving roughly from lighter to more intense styles makes it much easier to notice what is happening in each glass.
3. Taste. Don't finish every pour.
At a wine fair, a few sips are enough.
Take a small taste, give it a moment, and decide:
Would I actually want another glass of this?
That question is often more useful than trying to identify ten different aromas.
Wine tasting can become unnecessarily complicated. You don't need to find “wet stone”, “forest floor” or the exact variety of citrus.
Start with something much simpler:
Fresh or rich?
Light or structured?
Clean or funky?
Would I drink it again?
That already tells you a lot.
4. Natural wine can look — and taste — different
If you're exploring natural wine or low-intervention wine, don't judge everything by the expectations you might have from conventional wine.
Some wines may be cloudy or have sediment because they are unfiltered or minimally filtered.
A pét-nat may have lively bubbles or sediment in the bottle.
A skin-contact or orange wine may have more texture, tannin and savoury character than a typical white wine.
None of these things automatically means something has gone wrong.
At the same time, “natural” doesn't mean every strange flavour should be accepted as part of the style. A good natural wine should still feel balanced, enjoyable and intentional.
The point isn't to lower your standards.
It's to understand what you're tasting before deciding whether you like it.
5. Ask the winemaker better questions
One of the best parts of a wine fair is being able to speak directly with producers, importers and people who actually know the bottles.
You don't need technical wine knowledge to ask good questions.
Try:
How are the grapes grown?
Is anything added during fermentation?
Is sulphur added? If yes, when?
Is the wine filtered?
How long was it on the skins?
What changed in this vintage?
How do you like to drink this wine yourself?
For natural wine, these questions often tell you much more than simply asking, “Is this natural?”
There is no single universal definition of natural wine, and different producers work in different ways.
Understanding how the wine was made is usually more useful than the label alone.
6. Don't try to remember everything
You won't.
Take a photo of the label and write three things in your phone.
For example:
Fresh / salty / easy
Juicy / chilled red / pizza
Orange / structured / food
Then add:
YES / MAYBE / NO
That's enough.
By the end of the fair, you'll have a much clearer record than pages of detailed tasting notes you never read again.
7. Follow the producer, not just the grape
This is particularly useful when discovering small independent and natural winemakers.
If you like one bottle, taste another wine from the same producer.
You may start noticing a common character across their wines — how they farm, how they work in the cellar, how much intervention they use and the styles they enjoy making.
That is often a better way to discover wine than endlessly searching by grape variety.
You might arrive thinking you like “orange wine” and leave realising what you actually like is a particular producer's approach to skin contact.
That's much more useful.
8. Don't spend the whole fair chasing the weirdest bottle
Natural wine has become associated with cloudy bottles, unusual grapes and funky flavours.
Those can be fun.
But natural wine isn't a competition to find the strangest thing in the room.
There are also precise sparkling wines, clean whites, elegant reds and very classic-tasting wines made with organic farming, spontaneous fermentation and minimal intervention.
Taste widely.
Let the wine surprise you instead of deciding beforehand what natural wine is supposed to taste like.
9. Stop when your palate stops working
There is a point where another glass isn't teaching you anything.
Drink water. Eat something. Take ten minutes away from the tasting tables.
If everything suddenly tastes either amazing or terrible, that's usually a good sign you need a break.
You don't need to taste every bottle in the room.
Finding three wines you genuinely want to drink again is already a successful wine fair.
Going to a Wine Fair in Hong Kong?
Hong Kong has wine fairs and tasting events throughout the year, from large international exhibitions to smaller natural wine tastings and importer events.
For 2026, the HKTDC Hong Kong International Wine & Spirits Fair takes place from 5–7 November at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
If you're going, save this guide before you walk in.
And if natural wine in Hong Kong is what you're looking for, pay less attention to labels and buzzwords and more attention to the people behind the bottle, how the grapes were grown and how the wine was actually made.
That's usually where the interesting part begins.
Want to Explore Natural Wine Without the Wine Fair?
Start with the style you already know you enjoy — sparkling, white, orange or red — then explore from there.
→ Explore Natural Wine at The Earth Wine
Quick FAQ
Do you need wine knowledge to go to a wine fair?
No. A wine fair is one of the easiest places to discover what you like because you can compare many wines side by side.
What should I taste first at a wine fair?
Generally start with lighter sparkling and white wines before moving towards skin-contact, orange and more structured reds.
What should I ask at a natural wine tasting?
Ask about farming, fermentation, filtration, skin contact and sulphur additions. These usually tell you more than simply asking whether a wine is “natural”.
Is cloudy natural wine faulty?
Not necessarily. Unfiltered or minimally filtered wines can naturally appear cloudy or contain sediment. Appearance alone doesn't tell you whether a wine is good or flawed.
