Or any other big wine event, for that it matters?
Maybe we don’t need it anymore.
BUT.
If a year ago I had bet that Vinitaly would have skipped even in 2021 the traditional March/April appointment as they did in 2020, I would have won the bet. A year isn’t enough to defeat a so serious pandemic. A year ago, we were encouraging each other saying “everything will be fine” and dreaming about the vaccine as a magic wand that suddenly makes the virus disappear and saves the world. A year later, we have the vaccine, but the general condition isn’t improved. The vaccinations are going slower than the forecast, rules, and restrictions still keep being, and the people are more and more stressed, angry, disheartened. In just a word, unhappy. In this situation, many are beginning seriously to re-think about small and big events, local and international alike. We all are living an epochal change, and it would be naïve to keep on doing things in the same way we were used to.
They set Vinitaly in the roaring Sixteenth years and for over half a century it has been working like a charm. There was room for business meetings, for tastings addressed to consumers and professionals, for exploring new trends, for eating and drinking with buyers, importers, salespeople, friends. For a few days in a year, Verona used to become the wine world capital. Producers, buyers, importers, journalists, wine lovers, sommeliers, restaurateurs, and MW from all over the world would meet here to celebrate the common rite: wine, in all its facets.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 has disrupted everything, but many things, many trends, many behaviors did already exist, although maybe under track. The e-commerce boom, the video calls, the digitalization of many biz relationships, the crisis of some business models are not new in the last 12 months. The COVID-19 crisis has simply contributed to taking them afloat and boosting them. It’s been years that from time to time, some producers are claiming that the “wine fairs model is over”, because times (and people) are changed. The big international exhibitions are a heritage of the past when traveling around the world was a prerogative for a few and finding importers or a new market outlet was pretty difficult for most small Italian producers - unless they were willing to travel around the world 300 days a year. A thing that many of them have been doing for years.
Nowadays is totally different; almost nobody expects to find new buyers during the fair days, or to sign new agreements - although sometimes it still happens. There are many ways to get the same outcomes throughout the year, so what’s the sense of keeping on with the old commercial Vinitaly model?
People. Meetings. Close encounters of the third kind, let me say that way.
Digitalization is great… but is not everything.
Canceling the traditional, pharaonic Vinitaly spring edition with all its events and glamour was a must, and so was giving up even to the advertised (limited) Special Edition of June. The appointment has been postponed to the next October. Again, it can sound like a jump in the dark, but honestly, I don’t feel like criticizing them. On the contrary. The wine world needs an injection of confidence, of (cautious) optimism, to look ahead, beyond the COVID-19 crisis.
Most of all, we all need to come back to meet people, and travel, and share tastings. Foreign wine people need to come back to Verona and the surroundings because Vinitaly is not just an international wine exhibition anymore. Over the years it has become something better & bigger. That’s why I wish Vinitaly SE (and any future editions) all the best. We need each other. Meanwhile, in June they are going to host an “Opera Wine” edition with 200 Italian wineries instead of 100: for the lucky ones admitted to attend it, it is going to be like a party for almost newfound normality.
Or, at least, so I hope for them.
Notice: parts of this post have been published here. Thank you @NotesfromVerona for engaging me in your article!