THE WRITE STUFF

LAST October the annual global Wine Media Conference (WMC) was held in the Hunter Valley. Formerly called the Wine Bloggers Conference, the WMC has been going for 12 years and this was the first time it was held outside of the US, thanks to some funding from Wine Australia (a very small part of the $50 million invested by the government).

While not as well attended as previous conferences (due to the travel costs for the overseas attendees), conference participants came from the US, China, Japan, Europe as well as from around Australia. Unlike in Australia, where wine blogging is basically “a labour of love,” in the US wine blogging is a viable business, with many of the bloggers having 50,000 - 100,000 subscribers, and thereby wielding considerable influence on wine consumption.

On the Monday through Wednesday prior to the conference, the organisers put on an excursion for the overseas attendees to Queensland’s Granite Belt wine region, with cooperation from the Queensland Wine Industry Association and Granite Belt Wine Tourism. Here visitors were shown/exposed to some of the new emerging varieties the Granite Belt is becoming famous for. This was interesting for the US visitors as Australia is significantly more adventurous in exploring the suitability of new varieties to its climate than the rest of the wine