We’re media sponsors of this event and I’d like my readers to give serious consideration to attending wine2wine Business Forum 2021.

This is the first wine trade show of significance to “go live” since Covid hit. I don’t know about you, but I’ve certainly missed the travel and more importantly the connections I was able to create and foster by attending events.

This year wine2wine has another stellar cast of speakers from all over the world, doing deep dives into mission-critical subjects for producers, importers, distributors and on and off premise retailers.

I’ll be giving a presentation on how U.S. wine e-commerce has explosively expanded and fragmented since Covid first came on the scene in March of 2019. I find there is a lot of confusion both in the U.S. and abroad in regard to definitions (DTC vs. E-commerce), structure (third party facilitators vs. direct from retailer sales intra- and inter-state) and legality of the many formats entering this space.

Some of the names you might recognize include Drizly and Minibar Delivery, but there’s a host of other new E-comm players that span spirits and wine in the U.S. Reserve Bar, Caskers, GoPuff, CityHive being just the tip of the iceberg. And on top of those, the on premise has seen apps and tools delivered, check out www.SourcedCraftCocktails.com and ChannelAdvisor

I’ll focus on organizing, categorizing and sharing examples of how these various tools work, and provide some framework for evaluating which are the ones to consider in the wide variety of situations. New to the U.S. brand just launching? Existing brand trying to expand distribution? Looking for alternative route-to-market strategies?

If any of these questions are relevant to you, then please come join me in Verona on Oct. 18 and 19. Go here:https://veronafiere.vivaticket.com/WINE2WINE2021/Login/Index for info and to register.

I and my fellow podcasters on the Italian Wine Podcast channel will also be doing a Clubhouse marathon on Monday afternoon from 12:00-18:00 CET/ 06:00-12:00 EDT. You’ll need to join clubhouse to participate and you can do that on either iphone or Android by installing the clubhouse app here: https://www.joinclubhouse.com/