Masters of Wine Symposium in Florence
I am writing this while still electrified by the experience of the 8th Symposium of the Institute of Masters of Wine, which took place in Florence from 15 to 18 May. Exciting is not the word. 413 delegates took part, 118 of them Masters of Wine, the most attended of all time. As Piero Antinori (president of the Istituto Grandi Marchi and great promoter of this congress in Italy) observed, it was a memorable event for our country. For me personally it was a moment of joy and having taken part as an official speaker it filled me with pride.
Wine communication: reaching tomorrow’s audiences
I hope you can understand my anxiety, verging on panic, when I had to go up onto that stage, during the first session entitled “Wine Communication: reaching tomorrow’s audiences”, chaired by Sarah Jane Evans, vice president of the IMW, where I sat next to Jancis Robinson MW and Daniel Alegre, president of Worldwide Partnerships & Business Solutions at Google. I spoke about print media and the history of my magazine Civiltà del bere, which has seen three generations go by. This is what I said.
In the end … I got by and I would like to thank the participants that asked me questions, such as Miriam Morgenstern, vice president and associate publisher of Wine Spectator. Perhaps the most interesting question was: why do websites and bloggers end up also publishing some magazines or special editions on paper? My answer was rather terse: because advertising is worth more on paper, is still sold at a high price, therefore they use these means to make money! As well as the fact that scripta manent, as the Romans said, though they could never have imagined a written language with the same transience as the spoken word, digital … therefore we will have to update the phrase to “printa manent”.
