Traveling to the other side of the world to sell your wines is always a dream come true; presenting your expertise and confronting it with other cultures is an essential element in building a project like Jalan.
A fair like Vinexpo Hong Kong obviously starts a few months before it opens. To start with, you must register either directly with the organizers or through a professional association such as Inter Rhône, the organization responsible for promoting Rhône wines. You need to choose the size of your stand (6m² for us), fill out tons of forms to give your pedigree, decide if you want ice or fridges, a poster, a logo… an immense sum of boring but necessary details if you want things to go well and if you want to present yourself in the best light.
Then comes the difficult choice of samples because that’s the essence of the operation; we’re crossing half the world to showcase our expertise, so we can’t make mistakes or forget anything. When it comes to Jalan, it’s simple: we have six cuvées, so we bring them all (in the suitcase if necessary!). However, for Maison Lavau with whom we share the stand, there are more than 40 cuvées, making the choice more complex. We need to see which clients are coming, know what wines they import, and therefore bring the new vintages for them to taste. We also need to decide which countries we are targeting and bring the essential wines of the range to present. Finally, we must also include wines that are not yet distributed in the area and for which it would be good to find an importer. All of this has to be compressed into the choice of 24 cuvées, which is both the limit offered in the package related to the stand and the limit that can reasonably fit in a 6m² stand that already has a table, 2 chairs, a bar, a display, Anna and Benoit… it’s already a bit crowded!
Before leaving, you also have to “prepare” the fair, which means sending emails to all clients to make appointments but also sorting all the lists of prospects met in the past and telling them «Hi, we are here! We have some great stuff that will really interest you! Can we schedule an appointment?”. We send 100, 500, 1000… usually with a 2% return rate; it’s a bit depressing, but it’s part of the game.
The samples have arrived, the appointments are made, it’s time to go! Sunday at 5:30 pm, a small three-hour flight from Marseille to Istanbul, the most interesting ticket was offered by Turkish Airways, then after a two-hour wait, at 11:30 pm, departure for Hong Kong, a 12-hour flight that will land us at 5:30 pm with the time difference. It’s usually on this flight that a crucial question arises: should we sleep or not? How many hours? If we sleep for ten hours, the flight passes quickly, but then it’s a bit like getting up from a night’s sleep at 5:30 pm, the night ahead will be quite (lively) a party as it will be impossible to sleep. Personally, I try to sleep for 5 hours right after the enigmatic meal tray and set an alarm so that I’m awake for the last 5 hours of the flight; it’s a bit like getting up at noon, a good teenager’s sleep-in.
Airport, customs (very efficient), express train, taxi, and finally arriving at the hotel, just enough time to jump in the shower and head out for dinner. The next day we have to get up at 7 am (1 am in France, ouch!) because the fair opens to the public at 9:30 and we need to be there a bit early to set up, arrange the wines, make the stand look nice, open the samples and taste them (red wines for breakfast is always an exquisite moment).
A day at the fair is a bit the same all the time. We start at 9:30 to finish at 6 pm and in between, we talk with clients, we wait, we chat with neighboring wine market people about the past harvest, new appointments, we go taste at another producer’s stand, more appointments to have our wines tasted, oh, an unknown prospect who stops by the stand, we wait, we explain, we detail, we tell stories of wines and beyond, we see export friends and, without realizing it, the day has passed in the blink of an eye. It will be like this for three days, with hopes, great encounters, new contacts, old acquaintances, and lots and lots of exchanges.
When we have downtime with Anna, we work on Jalan, whose official launch is scheduled for mid-June, and there’s still a lot to do, so not a minute to lose. It’s intense!
At this Vinexpo, I also had to do interviews with the Hong Kong press to promote Rhône Valley wines as a whole. We also participated in a very beautiful dinner organized by Inter Rhône to present around twenty estates representing the diversity of the Rhône Valley to a hundred importers and other influencers from the area.
Hong Kong wouldn’t be Hong Kong without its culinary scene and nightlife. So, we enjoyed a superb French meal at Nissa La Bella, the restaurant of Olivier, the importer of Maison Lavau in Hong Kong. Another evening, we were invited to a Chinese dinner at the Cricket Club by aficionados of Maison Lavau to whom we presented our new brand Jalan. For other meals, it was Argentinian steakhouse and Din Tai Fung for dumplings (Chinese dumplings to die for!). It would take a month to appreciate the diversity of gastronomic offerings of this island-city. And let’s not forget, the rooftops for a drink with a view, the bars with Filipino rock bands who, I’m sure, were born with instruments in their hands. Amidst all this, there are obviously the export friends, the comments on the day at the fair, and everything we can discuss over a drink after a long day’s work.
Friday is already here, and the return flight to France is approaching, then it will be time to thank the clients, follow up with the prospects, learn from these three days in the global wine market, and realize what we did well and what we need to improve next time.
Fairs are a bit similar, whether in France or on the other side of the world, but one thing always stands out: we come out so enriched by these exchanges, these shares, all these cultures, and slices of life.
In short, another normal week for Jalan!