People go to conferences for two main reasons. To get inspiration or learn things about their business. And to meet other people in the same business, to network. But there are not many such events in the wine business. But since a few years there is “Must, Fermenting Ideas”. It is a three-day conference filled with top notch speakers from all over the world that also gives the participants plenty of opportunities to discuss with the speakers as well as with other participants.
The conference is the brain-child of two Portuguese wine journalists, Rui Falcao and Paulo Salvador. It takes place in the beautiful seaside resort of Cascais-Estoril, not far from Lisbon. I had the opportunity to sit down with Rui at last year’s conference that I attended and talk about what it is about and why it is interesting for people in the wine business to attend.
Read more on this in Per’s article on Forbes: Is This The Wine Industry Conference That Might Change Your Business?.
Here’s the introduction:
There is not really any big and important international wine business conference. Maybe that is about to change, with Must, Fermenting Ideas. In other businesses there are plenty of “industry conferences”. Maybe the lack of this in wine has to do with that the wine industry is very fragmented, maybe the most fragmented business there is. So producers tend to be small and not having big budgets. For conferences.
Since a few years there is a new conference, launched in Portugal, called “Must, Fermenting Ideas” that aims to fill that gap. I had the opportunity to participate in the conference when it last took place and to sit down with one of the co-founders and organisers, Rui Falcão (the other co-founder is Paulo Salvador), to talk about what they want to achieve.
In fact, they don’t just call it a conference, they call it “a think-tank wine summit”. The title is a word play referring both to that you must come to the summit but also that must is the start of all wine. “Our aim is to instigate ideas so that people will discuss what the wine industry is facing, all the challenges, what the trends are, what will change”.
Read more on this in Per’s article on Forbes: Is This The Wine Industry Conference That Might Change Your Business?.
Watch the interview here:
