As the world's most prominent Italian wine fair, Vinitaly attracts ~4,000 producers and turns the entire city of Verona into Vinitaly. As Managing Director of Vinitaly, Stevie Kim has built a vast, international community around Vinitaly and its many other products surrounding it, becoming a "Vinitaly Marathon." Stevie goes into depth about why each product was started and how it plugs into the entire Vinitaly ecosystem in part 1 of this 2-part series.  Detailed Show Notes:  Stevie's background: born in Korea, grew up in New York, married an Italian, and moved to Italy; Veronafiere recruited her to lead Vinitaly The Vinitaly "Marathon" (2025 schedule) Vinitaly Int’l Academy ("VIA") - 5 days 5 Star Wines - 3 days (April 1-3)OperaWine - 1 day (April 5)Vinitaly - 4 days (April 6-9)Also, do events outside of Verona (New York, China, Hong Kong) Vinitaly - established in 1967 in Verona It started as ½ pavilion, now 14 pavilionsLargest Italian wine event, primarily B2BThe entire town of Verona becomes VinitalyVinitaly in the city events for consumers~4k wineries (~60% of export market), accessories, winemaking equipmentAbout building long-term relationships - "the Italian way" - not just about doing business vs. Prowein's more business-orientedOperaWine Partnered with Wine Spectator as the most influential entity for Italian wineThe winemaker or principal must pourBy invitation only, each producer chosen (130 producers) gets 10 invitesVIA 1,300 candidates so far, 398 certified Italian Wine AmbassadorsUsed to do Vinitaly tours and masterclasses globally, now transformed to VIADeveloped based on Stevie's experience building a medial master's program that created a deep communityFaculty - Sarah Heller MW, Attilio Scienza - vine geneticistDifficult exam, deep and wide syllabus primarily based on grape varieties, uses Italian Wine Unplugged 2.0 as the textbookHas a course that includes 4 days of tasting ~300 wines before the examRequires a group video project to ensure ambassadors can speak about winesCreates a big community around candidates and ambassadors - more important than the material itself5 Star Wines (fka Vinitaly Int’l Competition) Gets international judges & VIA community opportunity to taste and rate Italian winesHelps producers - 90+ scores get a diploma during Vinitaly to display, which helps attendees navigate boothsDid a masterclass for producers w/ top scoring wines on why they scored highly, which helped them understand quality betterEvery tasting panel has an enologist, enabling the international community to connect with Italian winemakersWine2Wine business forum (Nov - after harvest, before Christmas) The goal is to help producers better prepare for VinitalyHistorically, they had 40-70 workshops on business topics2023 - did tastings where wine critics taught how they assess and rate wines2024 - getting an overhaul, no parallel session, 8 plenary sessions, 6 tastings, new structured networking - rooms led by specialists w/ 10-12 attendees Get access to library episodes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.