Creating Connections

Adversity breeds innovation and the past two years have shown us that wine people are a creative bunch. Virtual wine expos and hybrid tasting events burst onto the scene in 2020, revolutionising marketing plans and reaching new customers through clever combinations of talent, technology and meeting tools.

The most progressive wine organisations found themselves at the epicentre of a drive for connectivity between wine companies and overseas customers at a time when sales teams were grounded. Supporters say these new formats have applications for traditional tradeshows too, complementing physical attendance with virtual participation.

In October 2020, Milano Wine Week (MWW) pioneered a hybrid exhibition style that connected its main event in Milan, Italy to several key international markets through livestreaming technology. In October 2021, MWW expanded to 11 international cities in seven countries via Zoom. The event uses online meetings to deliver professionally tutored “live” tastings to overseas wine professionals in the USA, Canada, Russia, China, Japan and Hong Kong.

An epic nine-day event, Milano Wine Week is held each year in October with the aim of promoting Milan and Italian wine culture to the world. It attracts 10,000 people to 300 physical events in Palazzo Bovara, Milan. Federico Gordini, President of MWW, said the 2020 event welcomed a further 3,000 overseas wine professionals by broadcasting internationally.

This October, members of the Hong Kong trade were treated to live tastings, supplemented by livestreamed and on-demand masterclasses conducted by producers, oenologists and expert speakers. MWW’s interactive digital platform allows attendees to pre-register and plan their personalised schedules ahead of time. Gordini said the event’s success has proved the new format is a sustainable addition to MWW’s international events programme.

ACCESSIBLE FESTIVAL Hong Kong’s Wine & Dine Festival switched to virtual experiences and online offers in late 2020. Going virtual meant the festival could be extended to run over five weeks from mid- November to mid-December. The experiences and promotions helped hospitality businesses that were hit hard during the pandemic.

Local and global audiences were invited to free livestreamed masterclasses by celebrity wine experts, James Suckling and Debra Meiburg MW, and master mixologist Jay Khan. The “dine” programme featured fine dining, healthy eating and food plating classes. In the Lady’s Talk session, influencers and experts Sarah Heller MW, sake sommelier Jamie Lo, and actress turned winemaker Bernice Liu joined baker Shirley Kwok and chef Vicky Lau to share their stories.

BROAD FOCUS France-based virtual wine fair Hopwine began developing its digital education and remote tasting platform in 2018 as a partnership between bottle sampling solution Vinovae and speciality wine communicator Tyméo.

Established to qualify contacts remotely before wineries commit to physical meetings and international travel plans, Hopwine found itself in the propitious position of having a ready-made solution to the wine world’s international travel woes in 2021.

Hopwine’s model is centred on four main events per year and participation is open to all wine companies and countries. Meetings for 2022 will be held in January, February, March and April and are limited to 200 places per event. Additional offcalendar events can be scheduled at a customer’s request.

Hopwine can be livestreamed over a variety of platforms, including WeChat, but the company’s major innovation is Vinovae’s bottle sampling solution, which repackages wines into 2cl or 4cl samplers that are shipped globally to qualified contacts who attend. (Customs restrictions currently prevent shipping to China and India.)

Napa Valley Vintners was a featured pavilion at Hopwine 2021. “Hopwine was an innovative and tech-forward solution to connecting wineries with interested trade and importers,” said Connor Best, director of global marketing at Napa Valley Vintners. “While nothing can replace in-person meetings and relationship building, the virtual trade show allowed us to reach hundreds of members of the trade in dozens of markets that we wouldn’t have reached otherwise.”

NVV were also able to provide valuable appellation education to help overseas trade learn about the region and sell their wines.

“We learned a lot from our participation and look forward to participating in other innovative programs in the future,” Best said.

Pine Ridge Vineyards was one of 23 Napa Valley wineries represented at Hopwine. Export manager Abigail Smyth said the virtual wine fair enabled Pine Ridge to present its wines to new people in more markets than they would otherwise have been able to during the pandemic.

Virtual wine fairs will now become part of Pine Ridge’s marketing suite, supplementing its traditional tradeshow budget. “Hopwine introduced us to a good number of people, some of whom were unlikely to attend the major international tradeshows,” Smyth said.

Ingenuity optimised the wine industry’s outreach to homebound audiences and grounded professionals at a time when much of the world was locked down. Virtual expos and online wine fairs have enabled global wine professionals to maintain connections and pioneered innovative, effective modes of contact. Wine has always had a special power to bring people together—now there are even more ways for wine organisations to build communities and cultivate wine culture.