Winefuture finally gets into gear
Friday 13 November
It took half of the conference to get going, but finally Winefuture is looking to the future with some interesting insights and opinion. However, there’s still terrible wifi access and, unsurprisingly, things aren’t running to time. Next time, I’d like to see this gig held in Switzerland.
This morning’s session on emerging markets really gave us food for thought. Don St Pierre Jr, CEO of ASC fine wines gave us his insight into the Chinese market, which is the next big thing for the wine industry and should’ve had more time spent on it. One of his main points was that many producers have high hopes of breaking the Chinese market but have little understanding of the Chinese market or the fragmented system of distribution, which means they end up being disappointed when they try.
St Pierre Jr added: “For the import market to be more promising the quality of domestic wine needs to improve. That will not happen until the domestic players are focused less on volume and packaging. It will be led by smaller wineries and the bigger wineries will be forced to produce better quality.” Unfortunately, this won’t happen overnight.
What about the Russian market? There were very few predictions by the Dimitri Pinsky, founder of a major Russian wine distributor DP-Trade, because the government has just appointed a committee to look at the re-introduction of a state monopoly on alcohol. The committee is due to report back in March 2010 and until that time there seems little point in making predictions.
The Russian government is trying to stamp out alcohol abuse and it thinks it can do this by imposing a state monopoly. Pinsky said: “Alcohol abuse is not a new thing in Russia.”
“But the truth is from 2005 alcoholism has fallen to the lows of 1990 after Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign in 1985 and 1986.
“It looks artificial and suspicious that the volume of the alcohol market looks attractive and is now worth nationalising”.
More soon.
There was far too much showcasing and not enough information in some speeches, however, as usual, some of the most interesting things actually emerge simply from having the right people in the same place at the same time. I know I benefitted from the conference, but little of that came from the stage. I’d say Tim Hanni, Ryan Opaz, Robert Joseph, Gary Varynechuck, Jeremy Benson and Jancis Robinson (despite sadly limited appearances) were valuable and the most interesting.
Lets hope that the overall drive from these was enough to wake up a percentage of the audience to some of the issues and maybe energise the process of preparing for a new future!?
Nice to see you there and good luck with your travels!
- by Robert McIntosh,thirstforwine@gmail.com
Thanks Rob. I think we were all a bit frustrated by it.
Good to see you live blogging though - and let’s hope the next one (if there is going to be another) is a bit more forward thinking and dynamic!
- by Rebecca