Vinocamp, last week Saturday 10h of July, was the first event dedicated to web and wine dreamers in France. Not only we dream about achieving great things with wine and the Internet, but we also try to do it and many times… succeed.

This event was a good opportunity to share our experience, talk about what works, what doesn’t and what’s coming up. Now who knows, some new projects will maybe be born out of Vinocamp Paris. And it will probably be less than 9 months before we see the first one pop up.

France is one of most renown wine country if not the most respected of them all. We are very much old fashioned but when you look closer to the country wine population, you discover we are also one that is going forward. 

The proof is, the Vinocamp gathered over 70 wine and tech specialists, weither they specialized by passion on a side project or because they chose it as their main activity. From wine producers, wine marketers, wine sellers, wine community creators, wine writers, wine event planners or wine what ever. It was a wine cocktail that mixed all the ingredients to create a buzzing wine brain… growing exponentially.

Now if we are so little known in the wine world as wine techos, it is because too little of us cross the French wine borders, read and share their wine experience in English so that more of the world can read and learn about what we do. To couteract this trend at VinoCamp, we planned a conference call with one of the EWBC organiser. EWBC stands for: European Wine Bloggers Conference, it will take place in Vienna the 22 to 24th of October 2010. Two days to discover a wine region and exchange with the European wine community. 

Later in the day we also had the video conversation with Rick Bakas, director of social media at the winery St Supéry, Napa Valley. Tise first director of social media in a winery had much to tell us and it was interesting to exchange with him. 

Overall they were also a few American francophiles in the room or French Americanophiles, so that finally, we managed to cross the borders of wine at Vinocamp.

For my part, I was happy to talk with the people from Tag de Vin. On the Vinocamp day, it was one month exactly that my bottle was released, and I have still no QR code on the back label. Sometimes when you are not ready it is worse waiting and I now feel I have met the right people, and will have the right tag ready.

I have also met Pierrick Bouquet from “My Social Winery”, a company that helps French winery to get famous in the US. Not that I am not already famous but this is always better to be in a cool team and have the support of others. If you follow my adventures regularly, you may very well know that I have a 1296 bottles of Miss Vicky Wine hanging in NAPA, waiting for the online distribution process to be set up. Since I toured around the coasts, I have met many wine bars on my way that would love to have my bottle on the shelves.

Meeting Pierrick and his warm personnality gave me hope about finding an easier way to distribute my wine in the US and extending the Vicky Wine Club over there.

I also love seeing my wine writers friends as well as the wine producers that I share the web space with. I am also found of wine tasting notes website that have very fun people in the back office. The list is long, the day passed fast and even dinner time was not enough to exchange with everyone.

See you very soon!

VW