Archive
New wine blog from Rivetto a welcome addition
After listening for several hours last February to a panel discuss the impact social media such as blogging, Twitter and Facebook are having in today’s wine-marketing world VINO 2010 in New York City, and then recently reading The Italian Wine Guy and his comments on a similar panel at VinItaly, I was pleased to receive a new blog from Azienda Agricola Rivetto in Italy’s Piemonte.
Italian winemakers have long been pushing to get more of the U.S. market, and after hearing comments at VINO 2010 and VinItaly that younger Italians aren’t drinking as much wine as past generations, it’s seem now more than ever those Italian producers are looking to fill that gap through the U.S. wine market. But until the Rivetto blog, the only Italian winemaker I know with a blog is Susanna Crociani from Montepulciano.
Susanna is a delightful person and very talented winemaker, as you’ll discover by reading this blog by our good friend, well-known wine blogger and Italian wine lover Susannah at Avvinare. Susanna Crociani said during VINO 2010 that her blog helped increase her business noticeably. Not only her wine business but here agriturismo, as well.
I also read Franco Ziliani’s Vino Al Vino blog but I feel that it’s more news oriented, not necessarily something written from the heart and eyes of a winemaker, as are the blogs by Susanna Crociani and Enrico Rivetto.
So why don’t more Italian winemakers post on blog sites? Maybe, for one, it’s time consuming and there’s never much rest in the winemaking or grape growing business, as you’ll also find out by reading Enrico Rivertto’s blog entries. But also by reading Enrico’s posts, you get a real idea of who he and his family are and what they are doing.
It was interesting, too, to discover his blog was presented to an international journalism audience at a conference in Perugia and was described as “an example of wine marketing best practice.” Enrico also engages the world through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube.
Enrico’s comments: “Wine producers with blogs in Italy are really few, I think you could count them on one hand; I believe it’s a good way to bring the consumer closer to the complicated world of wine, making it easier for them to understand what lays behind and inside the glass.”
Those comments really hit home for many wine lovers. And winemakers, too, who want their customers to know what goes on in the vineyard and the winery. That’s probably every Italian winemaker I’ve ever met, and after hearing how blogging helped Susanna’s business, it’s almost a given for any winemaker who wants to get their name out to the public.
My feeling is, if any producer, whether it’s wine, cars or legislation, tries to hide the process, there probably is something wrong with the final product. It’s fun and refreshing to read blogs from Susanna Crociani and Enrico Rivetto. Let’s hope more Italian winemakers join the social media world.
Words flow from VINO 2010
Along with many of my online colleagues, I spent most of a week recently in New York City for VINO 2010, Italian Wine Week, sponsored by the Italian Trade Commission and promoted as the largest Italian wine event held outside of that country. The regional sponsors of Vino 2010 were Tuscany, Apulia, Calabria, and the Veneto.
The week was full of seminars and tastings and “Buon Giornos” as you met literally hundreds of wine producers, wine writers and critics and thousands of fans of Italian wines. Some of my colleagues have written excellent blog articles on their experiences, so I’ll share some blog sites and some dialogue on ones I’ve found most entertaining.
Susannah Gold at Avvinare wrote eloquently about her good friend and excellent winemaker Susanna Crociani of Montepulciano. Crociani makes a delightful Vino Nobile di Montepulciano DOCG and several other lovely wines, including a wonderful Vin Santo di Montepulciano DOC. You can read that post here.
The two Susanna(h)s were panel members for a seminar on the impacts of social media (Twitter, Facebook, and blogs) reaching out to the estimated 80 million or so “millennials,” those between 18 and, what, 28 or so. This generation of wine drinkers already is using social meida more than any other generation and the people who will direct the path that wine writing, drinking and conversation will take in the near future.
Other members of the panel included Alder Yarrow of Vinography,Doug Cook, Head of search at Twitter and founder of Able Grape, Steve Raye of Brand Action and Anthony Dias Blue. You can see the panel here, but you have to wade through a commercial before the panel video begins, and then you should fast-forward a few minutes to get past the crowd shots.
I attended a seminar/guided tasting on wines from Calabria led by Italian Wine Guy Alfonso Cevola. Titled: “Gaglioppo the Great: The New Generation Of Southern Reds”, the seminar featured 11 wines, not all of them Gaglioppo, along with a producer or representative of each wine. Among the wines were some made with Malvasia Nera, Greco Nero, Magliocco , Nerello Cappuccio, Nerello Calabrese and two grapes new to me, Arvino and Lacrima Nera.
The next day, the inestimable Charles Scicolone led a tasting on the wines of Apulia, of which he wrote eloquently on the i-Italy site here. What I hadn’t realized until spending an afternoon with Charles at Cipriani for a tasting is his intense dislike of barriqued wines. He prefers wines that aren’t hidden by oak and it was illuminating to see how precise his palate was in detecting oak overtones in what otherwise seemed pretty nice wines.
As he mentioned, he sometimes has to hold his tongue when talking to winemakers. He played the discretion card several times during the Apulian wine seminar, where several of the wines were heavily oaked, which overrides the natural flavors of the wine.
Charles also mentioned that his wife Michele’s newest cook book, “The Italian Slow Cooker,” is out and doing well sales-wise, which reminded me of Michele’s article on the seminar entitled “Italian-American Food…Why Don’t it get NO Respect?”
As she notes in her blog, it was the only seminar in three action-packed days that focused on food. Tom Hyland in his Reflections on Wine blog wrote both a food-related column and a general view of VINO 2010.
And that should be enough reading for now.
Wine Openers 