Press Room

VirtualVino 2011: The Dialogue on Wine Goes Online at VINO 2011

January 10, 2011 New York, NY, ― For the second consecutive year, the Vino 2011 Italian wine conference, organized by the Italian Trade Commission, will integrate “Virtual Vino,” a social media initiative aimed at opening dialogue with wine enthusiasts, trade, and media as the wine world converges upon New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel for Italian Wine Week. This year’s “Virtual Vino” program will move the conversations on Italian wine tastings, wine education and wine marketing to a virtual realm – via Twitter, Facebook, an Official Vino 2011 Blog helmed by Anthony Gilgio and LiveStream video – that is easily accessed by participants of Vino 2011 as well as spectators throughout the country. The Vino 2011 initiative follows the successful 2010 “Virtual Vino” experiment, where leading wine bloggers, journalists and trade live-blogged panel discussions, wine tastings and other events for the first time during Italian Wine Week, Tweeting in reactions, questions for speakers, and observations and contributing to an online dialogue that touched nearly 500,000 wine and food enthusiasts.

Bloggers, journalists and trade professionals attending Vino 2011 will be encouraged to share their experiences interacting with over 300 Italian wine producers and importers, and tasting over 400 wines imported to the US for the first time in 2011. The capstone “Virtual Vino” seminar, “What Emily Post Can Teach About Social Media, Millennial App-titude and Geo-Marketing,” will be live-streamed on the Vino 2011 official website and will continue the conversation begun in 2010. The 2010 discussion proved that protocol and standard practices can help create a climate for informative, courteous and productive sharing, and that straightforward, targeted social media initiatives can create lasting relationships between users, brands and consumers and other participants.

This year, panel moderator Tom Wark will lead the panel’s discussion on how etiquette, cogent messaging and editorial and marketed targeting can help create meaningful exposure for brands and other voices in the wine world. He will be joined by Gregory dal Piaz, editor in chief of Snooth.com, Talia Baiocchi, founding editor of WineChap.com (US) and wine columnist for Eater.com (NY and national), Jeff Lefevere, editor in chief of GoodGrape.com, Amy Cao, Director of Social Media for Foodspotting.net, and Kent Wilhelm, Senior Manager of New Media Design & Marketing for Astor Center. Tom notes that “Vino 2011 will be happening not just for participants in New York, but for the wine trade around the world. Marketers and the wine trade always want to work with and support those most deeply and most intelligently engaged in promotion and this is why Vino 2011 is so critical to the Italian producers—Vino 2011 marks the ITC and the Italian wine trade as savvy, intelligent and active marketers that understand the changing marketplace."