European Wine Bloggers' Conference 2011 (#EWBC): Last exit from Brescia

George Taber giving his keynore specch

Reflections on the 4th European Wine Bloggers Conference: 14th-16th October 2011

We reckon we were probably the last of the EWBC caravan to leave Brescia heading to Varese to stay with one of Robert McIntosh's old primary teachers. She refused to take any responsibility for his jokes! Before we left around 2pm on Thursday we enjoyed a plate of salami, pata negra and some cheese at the Elite Café just down from our welcoming hotel – the Ambasciatori. Over lunch we made a list of the good and bad points of this year’s conference.

Overall the good far outweighed the bad.

What was good:

• The pre-conference information, the fantastic welcome and the convivial and collaborative atmosphere established by Gabriella, Ryan and Robert.
  
  
• Storytelling as this year’s theme – this was a really good focus.
  
  
• The keynote speakers - all interesting and thought-provoking.
  
  
• The conference venue, especially the main conference hall in the church of Santa Maria.
  
  
• The Austrian sweet wine tasting on 14th October.
  
  
• Reliable Wifi at the conference venue.
  
  
• Our Friday evening dinner at Berlucchi. Lovely meal and it was good that the various producers each had a table at the dinner and we were joined by representatives.
  
  
• Our excellent Sunday trip to Ca’ del Bosco and Monte Rossa.
  
  
• Our post trip to Chianti Classico – excellent organisation, very interesting range of visits, many wonderful wines and great food.
  

What was bad:

• The conference catering company.
  Lunches at the conference centre: caterers tried to be too clever. With some 200 to feed they should have offered just a few dishes and three or more queues so that people were served quickly.
  Worst of all was the disastrous gala dinner. Although the caterers have apologised, they should have admitted that they were not up to the job of providing a meal for 200+ people in the Loggia. They should have checked the facilities and planned accordingly.
  

• The venue for the gala dinner was magnificent but ... a single toilet for 200 was woefully inadequate.

• The 'Bring your own bottle' dinner was a great way of getting to know our fellow participants but the finger food wasn’t very good value. Given the amount of wine something more substantial would have been more absorbent
  
  
• Waiting around for coaches, especially as participants were frequently urged to be on time!
  

What we would have changed

• We would have dispensed with the brief tour round the cellar before the Friday night dinner – arriving at 8.30 and with 50 people or so visiting the cellars was pretty much a waste of time. Much better to have a given us a welcoming glass of Franciacorta, something to nibble and then spent 10 minutes or so introducing the company and its wines before passing through to dinner.

• It would have been good to have had some more small group sessions where the issues raised in the main sessions could have been explored further, although we appreciate that the venue didn’t have many small rooms available.

Our warm thanks to the Vrazon triumverate – Gabriella, Ryan and Robert – and to all the sponsors that made the conference possible.

European Wine Bloggers' Conference 2011 (#EWBC): reflections on blogging

George Taber giving his keynote speech@the #EWBC

Inevitably being at the European Wine Bloggers' Conference raises questions about why we are blogging, how to do it better, who our audiences are and what are the differences, if any, between blogging and other forms of wine communication.

When I started writing about wine over 20 years ago I was a wine writer or as I preferred a wine journalist. Now am I a blogger who is also a journalist or is it the other way round or is there no longer any really useful distinction between a blogger and a writer/journalist? That blogging is just another tool for communicating offering different opportunities from the printed word and, doubtless, having its own limitations. Blogging, for instance, allows me point up more regularly the shortcomings of 1855 than would be possible in a published magazine. On the other hand the three news stories that Decanter magazine (through decanter.com) have taken from me about 1855 will, I'm sure, have reached a much wider audience. Of course some of the information that came to me through blogging about 1855 then went into the Decanter stories.  

On Friday in the initial round-table panel presentation and discussion, Evan Dawson, author of Summer in a glass and managing editor of the New York Cork Report, said that "specialism is the future of wine blogging". There are now so many bloggers out there that to be successful you need to carve out a niche. I'm pretty sure that Evan is right – bloggers need to find something that sets their site/blog apart from others. Whether it is by concentrating on a particular area, a particular style or some aspect of the wine world such as natural or organic wines. Equally it might be on a more campaigning theme – an area I think has not been fully explored by blogs.

Whether there is a real distinction between bloggers and journalists there ought to be one area of agreement between the two – if you sign up to go on a trip you keep your side of the bargain by turning up no matter how late into the night you partied. Yesterday on one of the EWBC trips to Franciacorta, the hosts and main sponsors of this year's conference in Brescia, only six people out of the 20 who had signed up turned up. 14 no shows, unless there is a very good reason why they didn't make it, is a disgrace and highly unprofessional. Such behaviour reflects very badly not only on the absentees but also on wine bloggers and the European Wine Bloggers' Conference. 

   

European Wine Bloggers' Conference 2011 (#EWBC): George Taber

 George Taber: the keynote speaker@#EWBC11

George M. Taber, author of The Judgment of Paris and To Cork or Not to Cork, gave the key speech yesterday afternoon to the 2011 European Wine Bloggers' Conference in Brescia. 'Telling stories' is the theme this year.

Here are a few snippets from George's speech:  

"Story not about you it is about your subject."

"Small detail important. Small details bring the character alive."

"Describe the thing that makes a character interesting and do it in detail and do it accurately."

"Bad thing is that it takes lots of time to find the little details." George tends not to tell his subjects how long he will have to spend with them and how many times he will need to interview them as he conducts interviews over a long time."

"Old journalistic trick – save your tough questions for the end." Tough questions posed at the beginning of an interview will make you subject clam up and be defensive.  

"Best stories not from the source but from their friends and, in particular, their enemies."

"Wine bloggers not in the pocket of the wine industry."

"More honesty from wine bloggers than Robert Parker."

I found George Taber's presentation thought-provoking and agreed with much of what he said. However, I have considerable doubts about the last two claims here. There are so many wine bloggers and from many different backgrounds that it is firstly difficult to make broad generalisations. It may be that many wine bloggers are less in the pocket of the wine industry than some critics but this is still early days and I can't see any significant difference between press visits by established wine writers and those by wine bloggers. In both cases the participants are wined and dined and often given a present at the end of the visit.

Equally it is a big and possibly, legally, dangerous (Parker is a retired lawyer), claim to make that wine bloggers are more honest than Robert Parker. Certainly a number of wine blogs have a fresh view of wine but more honesty overall? Not sure I would want to defend this in a court of law! 

 Conference in the magnificent setting of the Santa Giulia Museum 

European Wine Bloggers' Conference 2011 (#EWBC): stories sans arrêt

 Donna Jackson

The audience during the first session of story telling their stories without interruption...

 Emilio on the phone

Richard Ross (fone) and Andrew Barrow (laptop)

 On the fone

 Also on the fone

Another fone

iPad or tablet

Another pad 

... and another

Luis on his iPad

Me, too

4th European Wine Bloggers Conference and Born Digital Wine Awards

As announced on Saturday night in Vienna the 4th European Wine Bloggers' Conference will be held in Brescia and will feature the sparkling wines of Franciacorta. Registration for EWBC4 opened today@  http://ewbc2011.eventbrite.com/ Places are limited at 200.

The American Wine Bloggers' Conference is in Virginia on July 22-24, 2011, where you can taste the wines of the Eastern seaboard of the USA. Register HERE! Places are limited at 325.

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Further details on the new Born Digital Wine Awards here. In some quarters these awards have been nicknamed The White Noise Awards.