Nature Puts on a Show
By Bob Condor
Excerpted from the Chicago Tribune
March, 2003
ANAHEIM, CA—This March’s version of the Natural Products Expo West would feature some 1,600 exhibitors and more than 30,000 retailers, manufacturers, suppliers and others walking the dozens of aisles. The show broke attendance records. “We’re creating a town for a few days,” said Fredrik M. Linder, president of Boulder, Colo.-based New Hope Natural Media. The company owns and operates the show. “We try to design this show and its events to build community,” Linder said.
Sharing attention at the show were waves of new products. In the category of certified organic, for instance, 147 products debuted. There were more in the natural-products category.
“This is one of the last trade shows where consumer products actually are unveiled for the first time,” said John Maggiore, a supermarket consultant-broker based in the Boston area.
Some products explained their new commitment to organic ingredients, while others stuck to touting new flavors or the right balances of carbohydrates, fats and proteins.
The tasting booths for organic wine were popular. Lines tended to form around noon and grow longest by about 4 p.m. at the exhibits of Organic Vintners (a Boulder, Colo., importer) and Frey Vineyards (a California winery in Mendocino County that makes 14 varietals that are either organic or Biodynamic, which is a stricter form of organic agriculture). The wines are made with organically grown grapes and contain no sulfite preservatives. Wines with sulfites must say so on the label. “We crushed 50,000 cases of wine last year,” said Paul Frey, co-winemaker at his family’s vineyard and too busy bottling last weekend to make the trade show downstate. “We did 500 cases our first year [1980] and 1,000 cases the next year. Demand keeps increasing.”
Frey said anyone new to his family’s wines might best start with reds such as zinfandel and syrah because the Mendocino region is ideal for those types of grapes. Those wines have won awards in tasting contests, standing up to more traditional wines.
Yet “traditional” is in the eye of the winemaker much like “natural” at a show that considers, say, tofu wieners or tap water processed with vitamins or minerals to be natural.
“Winemakers have only been putting sulfites in wine for about 100 years,” Frey said.
“There are centuries of great wines to prove sulfites are not necessary,” he added. “We have found consumers like to have a choice.”
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