I’ve a podcast since 2019 July where I talk about wine, technology, wine market and sometimes tales of wine. It’s funny, really.
It names The Digital Wine, I speak in Italian language, and episodes are online every Tuesday at 5 p.m. CEST. I think I have to learn to speak a better english, before to publish my episode for an international audience.
A wine podcast is an hard way to make podcast, I think. More or less items are ever the same. So, interviews is a good way to talk about it.
Podcasts with interviews are the best, but only if the podcaster is good enough, and to interview people isn’t so easy. A couple of time I’ve invited friends-in-wine, but in the other cases I didn’t know people I’d to talk to. I’ll explain you how I build my interviews in another post.
My guests teached me
Here, I’d like to talk about what I learned speaking with my guests. They are wine growers, founders of start-up, media marketing experts, digital engineers. While the times aren’t the best, all of them found the way to stay in contact with their clients and grow their job. There’s who created a platform for online wine tasting, who accelerated the develop of a remote control technology for vineyards, and who tried to build a shared online shop for wine.
Everyone of them used the digital technology in some way, and everyone of them, both wine growers and start-up founders, agrees that this pandemic accelerated not only use of technology, but it has convinced that 4.0 revolution is now ineluctable.
I don’t know how the situation is in USA or Australia or New Zealand; in Europe we go away with two speeds: who run and who walk. Italy is most known for our life-style and less for the tech innovations. But there’s a grassroot push to enhance this, from every level of productive society, workers and business people. I’ve listened this in the interviews with them, they will to use digital technology to grow their business. And a wine podcast could be a good way to make it known.
The average size of Italian’s vineyards is 2 to 5 hectars, there are many families producing good wines, from 10k to 50k bottles for year. Sharing technology can help to run where they now only walk. But accessing to cloud services is complicated if you haven’t a good data connection.
Processes before technology
A great obstacle arises in front of their plans, the limit of the broadband in the rural zones. As I said, I don’t know how the situation is in other countries. I’d glad if you email me about it.
In Italy we have many countrysides where Internet is an hard affair, and this is a problem. I attended many online tasting, using really all known video call platforms; wine growers transmitted from their winery, and the limits of their broadband was fully evident. What I saw from my guests is resilience and tenacity, mainly in these times. Winegrowers learned to use devices and methods they’re not friendly with. They use scissors, barrels, presses; they know chemical and botanics. Make an advertising video is not to click ‘Play’ on a camera.
Technology isn’t the answer, it’s only a way to grow, to improve the business and life in general. The productive forces in Italy are really worried for that. They know that competition in the wine world (and not only) is hard; other countries are producing very good wines, many appreciated in the markets.
They know that it needs new way to produce and propose their wines and find new customers and wine lovers, because customers are changing too.
Thank you for reading. If you want to fund my project The Digital Wine, you can subscribe the paid version of this newsletter where you can read the first of a datasheet series. Others are in preparation, every other week just in your email. The ‘Subscribe now’ button is there for this.
At the next glass. Ciao!