Last weekend, I attended the annual bash called Boston Wine Expo, where spittoons are as rare as Yankees fans. As the weekend wound down, I boarded a Silver Line trolley that was rocked by the passengers’ wine-fueled rendition of “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. “We’d gotten down to 76 bottles upon arrival at South Station. By then, I was sporting a red-blinking Cotes du Rhone pin on my lapel, presented by one of my fellow chanters. We all debarked like old buddies. Somehow, such things don’t happen on public transit back home.

New Yorkers don’t ordinarily look to the hinterlands for major wine action, but I found myself lured to the Beantown waterfront. Billing itself as the nation’s largest consumer wine event, the 2006 version drew 19,000 wine buffs who had the happy challenge of choosing between pours of 1,800 different wines on the vast floor of the Seaport World Trade Center. The mass reticence for spitting after tasting those wines lead to many pairs of bleary eyes among the Bostonians – bleary but determined to forge on. And to sing on the way home.

It wasn’t the prospect of a tasting marathon that lured me to Wine Expo, but the array of sit-down seminars which promised fresh insights. Certainly, I never thought of Pinot Noir as “Pivot Noir,” for example, but that’s the clever term introduced by wine educator Mark Oldman at his seminar called “Outsmarting the Wines of ‘Sideways.'” Describing the wine at hand, an Argyle Pinot Noir 2004 from Oregon, as a “subtle, delicate, juicy berry kiss,” Mr. Oldman pointed out that pinot noir, with its gentle tannins, really does pivot between red and white wine usages, as when it outsmarts the usual match of chardonnay with a slab of broiled salmon.

Silence mostly prevailed at the next seminar, “Bordeaux Style Wines From Around the World.” Tasters focused on 10 blind-tasted wines and tried to match them to a list of the wines, which came from seven countries. All were made from traditional Bordeaux varieties.

Blind tastings tend to be exercises in treachery, and so it was with this one, at least for me. I was pretty sure, for example, that I’d picked out Alter Ego of Chateau Palmer 2000, an earlier-drinking version of this Margaux property’s regular bottling. Alas, I was a hemisphere away, as the wine was actually Glen Carlou’s Grand Classique from South Africa. Out of 10 wines, I identified just four, and I’m thankful not to have totally struck out.

It was already Q&A time when I arrived near the end of the seminar called “Brunch, Champagne, and Sparkling Wine” with Seaport Hotel chef Daniel Bruce. Based on my catch-up tasting of the last five sparklers from Italy, Spain, South Africa, and France, I concluded that Champagne still does the bubbles best. In particular, the Taittinger Prestige Rose was nonpareil in its balance of thrust and refinement.

Some of Wine Expo’s seminars could have been approximated at home, but others, like Sunday’s vertical tasting of eight Bertani Amarone wines ranging back to 1967, would have been impractical. Late-harvested in the Veneto’s Valpolicella district, local grape varieties are air-dried until, deep in the winter, they are finally fermented into a big wine. Rich in alcohol and sugar, Amarone somehow “drinks” as if it were dry. It was striking to see a shift, in this march of Amarones, from traditional wines with Port-like character to modern wines with fresh black cherry and fig notes. Not for every taste, Amarone is ready to overpower most foods except rich meats and cheeses.

Faced with an endless grid of tasting tables on the main tasting floor, I winnowed down my options. And so I navigated only to oddities of the wine world, like “Amador Ice,” made from Zinfandel, Renwood Winery of California’s contribution to the ranks of ice wines. “We know a chef,” the pourer said “who injects Amador Ice into Twinkies which he then bakes. Then he serves them covered with fresh fruit.” Color me dullest gray, but, as much as I love dessert, I hope I never find myself served baked Twinkies no matter how cleverly doctored up.

Even more curious than zinfandel ice wine was Miami Winery’s newly introduced trio of natural fruit wines. “Made in Miami’s subtropical climate” from fermented guava, mango, and lychee, these were subtly fruited wines, the lychee version being my favorite. It’s often said that lychee is a taste component of Gewurztraminer, but here was the real thing.

If the wines of Chateau d’Arlay, located in the Jura mountains in eastern France, were a curiosity, it’s only because the traditional wines of this region have fallen from fashion after being the toast of earlier centuries. Unfashionable, but still powerful and even bewitching, like the Vin Jaune 1997, made from the rare Savagnin grape and matured over six years under a natural film of yeast products, much as sherry is produced. Indeed, this Vin Jaune seemed a cross between a fine dry sherry and a firm white table wine. Chateau d’Arlay’s Chardonnay “a la Reine” 2000 was simply the most intense version of this grape I’ve ever encountered and I decided it would be the last wine I’d taste at Wine Expo. It still echoed on my palate, minutes later, as I raised my voice on the Silver Line.