Online Wine Tastings

Online Tastings Are Here To Stay

“Travelling thousands of miles between wineries in different countries without leaving my chair.”

Every time I tell my friends I’ll attend a virtual wine tasting, they start laughing compassionately. Until they realize the real thing arrives in my postbox— nothing virtual, small or bigger bottles of wine to taste. For example, during an online conference with the winemakers themselves or to probe from out of my lazy chair without any screen in front.

Of course, also, I do more like the real thing. I prefer live tastings over online tastings, chit-chatting with winemakers and colleagues, sniffing the whole tasting atmosphere, or, even better, exploring a vineyard or a cellar on site. But what was the alternative when we were locked down? Since Covid19 restricted our physical ranges, winemakers and producers adapted their marketing methods quickly to reach out to their existing or new customers. Virtual tastings popped up like mushrooms from the ground.

The basic idea is simple. A wine producer sends the requested wine or the wine they want to promote to the receiver. That can be private customers, buyers and traders (for retail), or wine journalists like me. Nothing strange because this also happened before Covid19. But when the ugly virus was sailing in, digital wine performances evolved and became more sophisticated, as no other means were available. Meanwhile, people got more confident and got used to online tastings, despite missing the social aspects of physical ones. Even the possibility of attending a wine tasting via social media, like Instagram, appeared.

“Online tastings are here to stay”, confirms Marc Almert, World’s Best Sommelier in 2019 and wine host from Baur au Lac Vins in Switzerland, a trader that offers more than 3000 articles from more than 300 wine producers from 14 countries. “They provide consumers and winemakers more possibilities to meet: offline, online, and hybrid.

Author In The House

Individual winemakers believe the hybrid wine tasting concept will last, like Nick and Annette Köwerich, who produce wines in the German central Mosel area (https://www. weingutkoewerich.de/). ‘Yes, we have been offering Zoom tastings since the beginning of Covid,’ Nick says. Either individually with retailers and restaurateurs, train staff, present the new vintage or entertain our private customers. Also, we invite authors to our wine Zoom meetings, who then read from their books while the participants taste wines. We have also been offering wines in 0.25 and 0.375 cl for many years now. Bottles are always sold out quickly at Zoom meetings during Corona time. We are a small winery that can react individually to extraordinary times. We love it!’

Online Events

More farmers like Nick and Annette or wine houses reach out individually to connect digitally to (new) customers, but during Covid times also, bigger virtual tasting events popped up. Like in France, where the organization Hopwine focuses on wine professionals, www.hopwine. com – with virtual events with real tastings. The company provides online visitors with small sampling bottles, with the possibility to connect and interact with representatives of the attending wineries during or after the event. As a wine writer, I attended some Hopwine tastings and virtually traveled thousands of miles between wineries in different countries without leaving my chair. From one tasting in the other, from one farmer to the other in less than a day, tasting dozens of wines, talking to dozens of farmers and a tremendous timesaving advantage.

I also received wine samples from another classic (offline) PR agency that altered their touch during Covid times. Like the Italian Studio Cru, which set up a marketing campaign around roses from the Lake Garda region in Italy. The announcement for the tasting at a distance evoked my expectations: “Chiaretto (key-ar-et-toh) di Bardolino is a pale and crisp rosé produced in Northern Italy, on the shores of Lake Garda, 30 minutes away from Verona by car, exactly halfway between Venice and Milan. Even though Lake Garda is close to the Alps, its climate is Mediterranean, and lemon trees, olive trees, and Mediterranean scrub grow on its shores.”

Two small boxes arrived in Spring, filled with fifty small bottles of rose (5cl). Fifty shades of pink to be scrutinized organoleptic on a sunny day in my garden. Life’s not that bad.

Offline Events

Virtual tastings will stay, and tools to meet winemakers and learn to know their products will be a permanent part of wine discovery, thanks to technology. Studio Cru, for example, built a platform for booking appointments between the press and their clients for the famous Vinitaly Fair in Verona. Also, at Vinexpo, the first live fair I attended after the demise of Covid (although still with a face mask and proof of vaccinations), it provided or visitors were provided with an organizational app. The digital thing relieved my choice stress as I had to choose which of the 2.800 attendants, winemakers from all over France, I should visit within a few days. At that moment, I longed for an online tasting. However, I lost this longing strolling through the vivid streets of Paris after visiting the fair and bringing energy and nothing but the real thing, my friends.

Hans Kraak is educated in biology and journalism and wrote two books about nutrition and health. He worked for the Dutch ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food quality and the Netherlands Nutrition Centre. As editor in chief he publishes in Voeding Nu, a business to business platform on food and health, as a food and wine writer he publishes in Meininger’s Wine Business International and reports for PLMA Live EU and PLMA USA.