MORE WEB IN THE WINE WORLD - EUROPEAN WINE BLOGGERS MEET IN BRESCIA (October 14 to 16) FOR THE “EUROPEAN WINE BLOGGER CONFERENCE”, THE ONLY INTERNATIONAL EVENT DEDICATED TO COUPLING THE TWO WORLDS

The web is speeding more and more into the wine world and wine bloggers from across Europe are meeting in Brescia (October 14th to 16th) for the 4th edition of the “European Wine Bloggers Conference”, the only international event dedicated to combining the two worlds. Internet and new technologies are the most innovative communications front for wine for close to 10 years now, and web 2.0 is changing the language of wine, affecting the entire sector and reaching a much larger audience than any traditional more or less prestigious sector magazine can.
Founded in 2008 by wine bloggers Gabriella and Ryan Opaz and Robert McIntosh, the EWBC (http://winebloggersconference.org/europe) is the European version of a similar initiative held every year in America the “American Wine Bloggers Conference”, which was attended by over 1.000 wine bloggers in Virginia last July and in 2012 will be held in Oregon. The European conference is hosted every year in a different European country. In 2010 it was held in Vienna, and the 200 participants, all professionals in the wine sector, came from 30 different countries, including the U.S.A., New Zealand, Brazil and China. In the three day Brescia event numerous international wine communication experts will take turns speaking, such as the film director Paolo Casalis, the American journalist of “Time Magazine” George Taber, the internationally renowned photographer Emily Troutman and the writer and reporter of the “New York Cork Report”, Evan Dawson. Between a report and a seminar plenty of space will be given for wine tasting: “The Taste of Italy”, with tasting tables of Italian wines and their producers.
There will be at least two guided wine tastings; one reserved solely for Franciacorta DOCG (Consortium is the main sponsor), and the second will be a more general presentation of the Italian wine production. The organization of the European Wine Bloggers Conference wants to make the wine world understand that communicating is moving more and more towards the new Internet medias and new technologies, and moving steadily away from traditional media such as print: “Wine blogs and the Internet are having more and more of an impact on the world of wine” says Ryan Opaz, co-author of www.catavino.net, one of the best known and appreciated wine blogs abroad. Learning to know and converse with these new opinion leaders will be increasingly important for their businesses, because the number of consumers that wine blogs can reach is far greater than that achieved by even the most prestigious traditional magazines”.