Thanks to Christian Seely and Marie-Louise Schÿler of Château Pichon-Longueville in Pauillac, their guests enjoyed a wonderful Portuguese evening during Vinexpo. Château Pichon-Longueville belongs to Axa Millesimes Group that owns also vineyards in Portugal as well as other vineyards in France and Hungary. When Christian Seely traveled to Portugal 18 years ago, he fell in love with the Douro region and its wines.  That’s why this Classified Growth welcomed 26 vineyards from Douro for an elegant and very interesting tasting in the chateau chais.

After the tasting of the red wines, the guests went back to the park where white and rosé Portuguese wines as well as cod (steamed, smoked, carpaccio – whatever you liked) and various hams awaited them.  The dinner was then served under a tent in the park: a goat casserole, broad beans, new potatoes and mushrooms in a pultry sauce; almond tart and “Queilo da Serra da Estrela” cheese won the heart of the guests. Of course, red wines from Douro, Quinta do Noval Colheita 1997 and various ports from the Douro producers were served on each table. What about Pichon-Longueville wines? Forget them: for a few hours, we were in Portugal!

The evening was a great success. At first a little surprised by this “Douro Evening”, guests became enchanted by the event. They did not learn anything about the history or the wines of Château Pichon-Longueville but they will remember the most original gala evening in Bordeaux of this 2011 ediiton of Vinexpo. Is not it the best marketing strategy? Kudos to Christian Seely, Marie-Louise Schÿler and the great team of the chateau for an unforgettable evening!

Last year, I wrote in my French blog about winefair.com, this French initiative: a virtual and 3-D wine fair. I was impressed by the technology and the design of the site. This year, the second edition of winefair.com opens up to international markets.

During the last few weeks, I was in contact with many American winemakers and opinion leaders. The concept is not easy to grasp because it is rather innovative and creative: the site is mostly a business platform allowing winemakers and professionals to get acquainted, meet, talk and keep in touch after the show. In order to enjoy all the functionalities of the site, you must register as a visitor: you’ll then access the list of exhibitors, be able to see when they will be available on their booth (a green dot next to their name) and even make appointments with them on the agenda.

Wine enthusiasts are also encouraged to register as they’ll access a description of the winery, presentation of the wines available and also be able to chat with the producers.

Who are the producers ? A lot of them are French, some are American (Randal Grahm from Bonny Doon, Craig Camp from Cornerstone Cellars, Jeff “El Jefe” Stai from Twisted Oak Winery), Australian (Mark Gifford from Blue Poles in the Margaret River area), Portuguese or Spanish.  Consumers and professionals can take advantage of the agenda of each producer to come and meet them. It is a rare oppportunity as most of those international producers do not sell their wines in Europe.

As all fairs, conferences in French and in English will take place during the 5 days of the show: they are live video conferences. I listened to a couple of French conferences live today and was impressed by the level and interest of the content.

The first conference (image above) was with the CEO of the Spanish Qude Bodega about organic wines and wine tourism. This afternoon, the discussion was on the site wine-sign.com, linking communications and wine. It is a lot of fun to chat on line with the speakers using their tchat tool or Twitter.

There were some technical glitches yesterday during the opening. The site was even cut off for a few hours – thanks to a lot more connections than expected on Monday at 9:00 am!  But things seem to be fixed by now and hopefully the site will run smoothly from now on.  The wine fair might open an extra day next week to answer all the requests of people and give more time to the exhibitors to meet with the crowd.

Take the time to stop by the fair and enjoy the English-speaking program we designed specifically for you!

[Note: I work with winefair.com because I believe in the project, my first criteria to accept a new mission.]

The IPAM Marketing School in Porto, Portugal, kindly invited me to be a speaker at their conference on Wine Marketing on April 28-29. I’ll speak on “New technologies and Innovation, success strategies for wine brands”.  It will give the opportunity to visit some Douro wineries and visit the port wineries in Porto. I look forward to the event.

In 1999, the Web was still considered an innovation in Europe. In France, 11,6% were connected; 100,000 adventurous people are managing their bank accounts on line; e-commerce brings 200,000 euros! It was also the time of the Internet boom: start-ups are getting millions from angels and investors. After two years of euphoria and craziness, it is the krach. But, in spite of that, one third of the French population was connected – mostly by cable. Amazon.com and ebay.com opened their French site. A healthy sign of confidence in the new economy! In 2004, 12 million French were on line, more than 50% connected by cable or high-speed. Apple launched its iTunes platform in France. In 2005, two years after the US, French people became addicted to blogs. 2 million French bloggers appeared almost over night! In 2006, advertising on line brought several million euros. In 2007, the iPhone became available in France. In 2009, over 32 million French people were connected; they were aware of Facebook and discovering Twitter.

Of course, France is not the most Internet friendly country. Regulation is the keyword for the French administration on connectivity, privacy, wine, advertising, e-commerce. In spite of all the restrictions, France is opening up to the 21st century. To look at the future, one has to look at the US. In the last ten years, I saw tremendous innovations coming from the US in the wine industry: services for wineries such as VinoVisit.com, search engine specifically tailored to wine like ablegrape.com, think tanks like VinTank.com, on line wineries such as Crushpad, new packaging. I also saw some innovations coming from Europe, like the unique code designed by adegga.com in Portugal.

New consumers generated new marketing strategies and new trends: women and Millennials, emerging countries. China and India became the new powers – first by the exponential number of wine consumers but mainly by their potential production.

Let’s not forget the incredible wine communities spread all over the Internet in already existing communities: wine groups in LinkedIn.com, pages or groups on Facebook, networks on Twitter now helped by the search. Individuals became leaders and carry the new trends to new countries and new consumers. It would be incredibly long and difficult to mention all the innovations but i’m really amazed by what happened on the Net in ten years.

I look forward to witnessing and being a modest part of the formidable innovations that will take place in the next ten years. Welcome to 2010!

Wine tourism is a difficult topic when you’re not a specialist of… tourism but love wine. Promoting both at the same time is a difficult exercise: wine is part of a local culture. When you didn’t travel to the place where the wine comes from, you discover a region through the wine. How to connect both?

Some people found the right answer and founded 10 years ago the “Great Wine Capitals Network” or GWC. The network includes the major wine regions of some parts of the world: Bordeaux in France, Mendoza in Argentina, Bilbao and Rioja in Spain, Mainz in Germany, Napa Valley in California, Cape Town in South Africa, Porto in Portugal, Firenze in Italy and now Christchurch in New Zealand. It is the only such network to encompass the so-called ‘Old’ and ‘New’ worlds of wine, and exists to encourage travel, education and business exchange between their internationally-renowned centers. In its 10 years of existence, the network has created many interesting initiatives: the “Best of Wine Tourism awards”, an annual international grant for students, organization of many symposiums and conferences as well as facilities to promote wine tourism.

The GWC is managed by its General Secretary, Catherine Leparmentier, based in Bordeaux, France. The group is very active on the Net with a Facebook group, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn Group and now a blog. Quite recent, the blog opened about 3 weeks ago but has already many interesting posts. I especially enjoyed the ones on Tourism 2.0 and the Vivanco Dinastio Wine Museum.

The Great Wine Capitals are really in Web 2.0! Long live to their blog!

Since the Social Media Report by VinTank published a couple of months ago, the notoriety of adegga.com increased tremendously and got a much deserved attention. Founded in Portugal by Andre C. Ribeirinho, adegga.com is a very innovative company whose technology is well advanced.

In spite of being Portuguese born, adegga.com is an international platform available in Portuguese, French, English, Spanish, Italian and Dutch. Adegga.com and its team, the two Andres and Emidio, were the technical wizards behind the EWBC: all technical problems and glitches were solved with energy and efficiency by the smiling guys. But the interesting part was the discussions with them about what is their very unique creation, the AVIN code (Adegga Vin Identification Number). You certainly heard about the ISBN code, the identification number for books that allows any libraries or bookstores to identify a book by its very unique code. Adegga created the same system for wine. An AVIN code will be given to every vintage of the same wine.

Even more amazing is the ability for a consumer to access information on the AVIN coded wine through a mobile phone. A winery can apply either the diagram with the code on its back label or only the AVIN number. When the diagram is applied on the bottle, the consumer directs the phone camera on it and has direct access to the wine information on the adegga site or, very soon, on an other site.

This impressive technology is a big improvement for the wine consumer as well as the wineries. The consumer can access useful information while the winery has a direct access to its consumers.

Our first day of conference ended last night with a grand buffet and the pouring of the wines of the Douro Boys. But before we were rewarded by such a feast, we had to work hard through two tastings.

Both tastings were a real initiation to Spanish and Portuguese wines. Esteban Cabezas, Marketing Director of the Wine Academy of Spain, conducted a fascinating tasting of the fortified, dessert and natural sweet wines from Spain and Portugal usually featured during the Vinoble Fair (Salon de los Vinos Nobles) held in Jerez from May 30 to June 2, 2010. Esteban made a brilliant presentation of the style and history of those wines followed by the tasting of two Amontillado wines, some Port wine, a red Moscatell, a Madeira and the mysterious Garvey Gran Order PX. It was a trip in the history of various wine regions and through elegant and unusual flavors and aromas.

After a much needed palate cleansing, we were back in the tasting room facing 18 wines of the energetic and talented Douro Boys. The Douro Boys is a group of five wineries: Quinta do Vale Meao, Quinta Vale D Maria, Quinta do Crasto, Niepoort and Quinta do Vallado. After the serving of their white wines, each wine maker conducted the tasting of his wines.

Questions on wine making were asked by the floor and the Douro Boys answered with humor and talent. We had a fascinating and entertaining event. As a wine marketer, I was also interested by their branding strategy. Douro is a very easy name to remember whatever the native language. As one of them pointed out, “boys” might be more ambigous in some countries but to most people, the Douro boys is a group of wine makers from Douro. This collective branding strategy was the first step that now allows them to differentiate each winery from the other ones. The tasting showed clearly that each winery has a different style of wines. Every attendant has the possibility now to make his/her choice among the various styles of wines.

Besides tastings and panels, the EWBC is the best opportunity for us, bloggers, to meet face to face with our contacts and Facebook friends. I also had the opportunity to see again some wine professionals I rarely have the opportunity to meet. I was delighted to exchange ideas and renew acquaintance with a lot of people. And I’m looking forward to getting acquainted to many of the other participants – all fascinating people from different countries.

Thanks to the Dream Team of EWBC to bring us all together!

Next week I’ll be on my way to the European Wine Bloggers Conference in Lisbon, Portugal. I’m one of the lucky one who’ll get to speak twice – once on Social Wine Brand and the second time on the Future of the Social Wine Brand.

But what is exactly the social wine brand? More and more winery owners are getting aware of the importance of social media to reach their consumers. They start writing blogs, create a page on Facebook and an account on Twitter. Those are great initiatives but they’re far from being as efficient as they could be. Indeed being part of a social media network means a lot more. It means interfacing with other wine professionals – even peers – and, of course, consumers. One of the weaknesses of the European wine network is the lack of communication and cooperation between winery owners and wine makers. Europe is more individualistic and competitive than its New World friends – i.e. Americans, Australians or South Americans. It impairs the launching of efficient networks. Indeed, networks require trust and sharing information and tips. Europeans are usually more retentive and don’t give away information or tip to an unknown party.

Is there a solution for this situation? Yes, we see in Europe innovative initiatives coming from wine makers who understood how working together (and not against each other) is important. The French “Mes Vignes” network is one of the best examples. Several winemakers from various French producing regions got together to offer wine lovers the opportunity to rent some vines for a year and create their own wine. In Cahors, the wine makers “banded” together to promote their wines in the US through blogs and buzz marketing. I’m sure other countries have many success stories they’ll share during this panel on social wine brands.

Blogging is certainly one of the best social media a winery can develop. But it is not enough to write posts on the state of the vine or how the wine is doing in the vat or in the barrel. The blog needs to bring value to the winery or the shop owner by creating a special relationship with the final consumer. The blogger needs to create links with other bloggers by sharing information, giving away ideas or starting interesting discussions. Topics can vary. I recently read a discussion on Facebook initiated by David Corey on : “would you rather buy high priced wine discounted or small production wines with consistenly fair pricing? let’s say $29 and under?” The question is a very good example of the kind of topics consumers are passionnate about: over 30 people answered and commented upon each other’s comments.

Don’t hesitate either to join professional networks such as OpenWineConsortium or LinkedIn with its Wine 2.0 or Wine Business section. Be proactive, create relationship and emotion around your brand. Comment on other people blogs, give away information to help somebody, get involved in discussions you are interested in – “just do it” or “think differently” but whatever you chose to do, do it in a spirit of cooperation and with an open mind.

Doug Cook is the founder of ablegrape.com and head of Twitter Search. EWBC is the European Wine Blogger Conference held in Lisbon, Portugal, from Oct 30th to Nov 1st, 2009.

Ablegrape.com is the wine search engine I already raved about on this blog. I will spare you an other post on the subject. But if you want to know more about the man behind the search engine, read his interview on the blog of the conference. As the date of the conference is getting closer, I’m looking forward to meeting Doug Cook and many other interesting attendees or panelists. Stay tuned to the EWBC site as the speakers’ names and the final program are going to be uploaded very soon.

See you in Lisbon?

The 2009 EWBC will take place from Oct. 30 to Nov 1st, 2009 in Lisbon, Portugal. As the date gets closer, I’m getting more and more excited about the event. The program is well thought out and covers issues important to wine bloggers, such as “Monetising the Social Wine Brand (retailers, social networks, wineries, affiliate schemes” and “Social media to better reach your audience?” The round up session will be about “Social Wine Brand Future: New technologies, new media, and publishing”. All keynote speakers and panelists are not yet confirmed but trust Ryan and Gabriella Opaz of Catavino and Robert McIntosh of the wineconversation to get the best!

The most challenging issue the organizers are facing is the language issue. English has been chosen as the “official” language as very often the case in international conferences. But let’s be clear about it: a lot of participants or speakers are not native English speakers. Their blogs are usually in their native language, meaning French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or German. All of us will gather to share information, experiences, tips through a foreign language. It will be a fascinating experience to meet face to face with bloggers I “know” through their blogs and sometimes painfully tried to read. I must confess my German is very rusty, my Italian very “practical” and my Spanish almost non existent. I’m certainly not the only one to deal with such a problem and the EWBC will be the perfect opportunity to open better channels of communication between us through a common language.

European (and a few American) wine professionals and wine bloggers will meet in Lisbon at the end of October. We’ll also taste great wines but mostly we’ll try to create stronger links between the national communities and put together our knowledge of the social media and the wine world to create a future of better communications between the wineries and their consumers at the European level. Cheers and thanks to Gabriella, Ryan and Robert for putting together this incredible event! See you in Lisbon!