Ep. 1221 Silvia Ghirelli | Voices With Cynthia Chaplin

Some of you have asked how you can help us while most of us would say we want wine. Italian wine podcast is a publicly funded sponsor driven enterprise that needs the Moola. You can donate through Patreon or go fund me by heading to Italian wine podcast dot com. We would appreciate it. Oh, yeah. Welcome to the Italian wine podcast. I'm Cynthia Chaplin, and this is voices. Every Wednesday, I will be sharing conversations with international wine industry professionals discussing issues in diversity, equity, and inclusion through their personal experiences, work in the field of wine. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate our show wherever you get your pods. Hello. This is Cynthia Chaplin from voices, and today I have the pleasure of chatting with Sylvia Guiredaldi. She's an expert in public relations, hospitality, and marketing in the wine industry. She works as a consultant for wine companies and as an educator, teaching hospitality, and wine experience, marketing management, and anogastronomy tourism. She's currently collaborating with tenuta El Quintinto in Tuscany, and it's a great pleasure to have her here with us at wine to wine today. Welcome Sylvia. Thank you very much. It's my pleasure. Thank you for Yes. It's our it's our first day at wine to wine in our first podcast interview for the marathon. So we're having a happy morning. And I just want to talk to Sylvia a bit about what she's doing in the industry. So I know you've got degrees in tourism science and economics and communication. And originally, you were working with TUII and travel. So what got you interested in wine and tourism? How did you put those two things together? Oh, my background is interesting, but, I love wine. So my question, for the product in in general, with a strong engineer. Then, somewhere many years ago, I work for a best selling person in Daskany, and the target was mainly a migrant twist, and the other opportunity to design and deliver the first experience is related to the wine. And I realized we've been interested in need to flash into this. As the panorama custard consumption is changing so much in the recent year. Curious moving towards a more exponential form of consumption. So I thought, mine that is an accidental product for the electricity itself, who probably sent his right expectation on emerging capital of the month. So whether I went to New York to work for self issue recognition agency. And I was a customer of this agency, like, Italian queries. And then I went back in Italy, I started work for a black and white companies. It was locking up to me as we enter when the line was settled in Walgley. Then it was PRMC that I'm already, the seller designed by Avaya Vatta, and then it worked to have to know you. And, actually, during the years, my initial intuition has been confirmed. And the thought why tools can be considered a relatively very reason this industry is a fast growing and financially love lucrative segment. And, one of the reasons that TV are not longer comparing that experience, but they are challenging for segment and larger tours. I think that's so true. So much of what we do now doesn't just have to be about the wine, what's in the bottle, what's in the glass. A lot of it is about the storytelling, where we are, where the wines from, what grapes they are, and and how important they are, how native they to their area. So I also see a connection between wine and tourism, and I think we're really seeing that grow and and boom, especially now after COVID. So, I hope we'll be seeing some more. But You're an I was sommelier, so am I? So you aren't working as a sommelier, and I'm just wondering how your qualification has helped you in your PR. Why PR is an angry profession? And technical knowledge is a good starting point, I think, but I believe it's, willing to be flexible and to know different things. I I see that we must have a head on the ground, but I know the product, but at the same time, it's important to understand communication and say it's logic, augmenting information on our production, and to create a project that has cards in all this moment. Is important to have a very real life compassion vision and how and know how to convey, his external leader to do the curiosity and influence the I think you're so right. Putting together a technical background, a similar background or, a WSTT background, those sorts of things does make it easier to put together the marketing aspect and the the tourism aspect. So just having that qualification, even though you haven't worked as a, it's useful. And I think that's something that people need to understand. Getting those qualifications doesn't mean you're going to work in a restaurant for it means that you have a technical background. So I just wanted to ask you what you think about sustainable wine tourism. It's a big word. These days being sustainable, is it possible to create animal wine tourism in Italy. Now how do we combat the negative effect of long flights and driving around in cars and buses? What would you like to see happen in the field of wine tourism in the next few years? Are you enjoying this podcast? Don't forget to visit our YouTube channel, mama jumbo shrimp. For fascinating videos covering Stevie Kim and her travels across Italy and beyond. Meeting winemakers, eating local foods, and taking in the scenery. Now, back to the show. I think that generates being high quality food and wine is a sector that offers a level of best practices, and, it it's sustainable tourism. And this was what was said that the effort is to create an experience around the product. Putting together culture, real economy and development. I was in a hospitality for mine of the needs to recount the concept of product quality, moving to the one process quality. And, if producing mind doesn't mean all the cases of product, also generating money, not only. I think that in the best case is to establish that the one percentile is not only to risk product. But can also help funding, cultural district. And in somehow, I think that, I would like to see the chooser that the sector offering innovative services able to improve the quality of experiences, but also the quality of life of those living the tourist destination. That's such a good point. I think people often don't think about the fact that bringing tourism to wine areas. It doesn't help just the wine producers. It also helps other people in the local area, you know, for for shopping, for other local products, for dining out, restaurants, all kinds of things suddenly or if you're near a beach, things like that. So there's a big part of, what we do, sort of, the invisible sector that's affected by my tourism. That's a good point. And it's so important that and have the average name, with all its stakeholder. So for both the the actors, it's important. So this is for new sustainability. I think that's great. I've I think people tend to forget that sustainability is not just about the soil in the air. It's about people as well. If everyone moves away because they don't have a job, it's not sustainable. So, where do most of your clients come from, Sylvia? I'm just curious. Assuming they're not mostly Italian, they must be mostly for you. Yeah. These came to the lab in the last year. So, And, Shane, if you think about big companies, like, where I was in Florida, I got to know your, that I would or talk you all to here at sleep. Now I think in a winter that is more in the south of my name, ma'am, we have more Italian both because it's an area that is not, maybe, a must have are in in my destination, not yet. Not yet. Exactly. But, and because of regarding, problems, so that we start well in the last few months, again, icons, and then people from all the word, ma'am, but, you know, we still have more talent now. Right. But that's so interesting because often I find that a lot of what's happening is still coming from foreign, foreign influx, foreign tourists who are coming in, but it's nice to know that Maureva is getting visited by Italians themselves. I think that's really important. So they feel invested in what's happening in the industry too, which is which is great. I just wanted to ask you before we go about the next generation of wine drinkers. We've all seen a lot of statistics lately. They're a little bit scary. People between the ages of twenty and thirty aren't thinking wide as much as they used to do. They're not moving towards wide as they get a little older and have little more money in their pockets. So With gen z and beyond, do you think they're going to respond to wine tourism and wine marketing? How do we capture the imagination of this type of a consumer? They're very different from the previous generation. In Texas, dive behavior, I think they are a really good generation. They are open minded, very more music out to them. They prefer to avoid labels, and they are also very interesting, including now to our food and beverage products of bacteria. So I think these new consumers seem to seek some cultural production that's cheap this card value from certified quality and experts evaluation, to provision of an intense, informational and knowledge and domain. So maybe they request for more basic one education from the industry in the attempt to make wine more approachable. For the mental motivation, the eye consumption could be represented by an increasing learning process, which started maybe with a first occasional that the stimulate diversity, tolerate biodegradable is to elaborate premium capacity to choose the products. And, once a self is in level of knowledge is reached, the pro the process lead to on one end, growing the amount of culture and really necessary. And on the other end, to finance the importance of value. So maybe they would love to have more options less expensive, like this thing, more sampling in one shop. Hardy before criticizing. So in this context, I think that binary is futileity. Why do we still have a great opportunity to create value around wine and create synergy between people and the tramper winery and guests. Can represent the the the way to reach reputation. The visitor, we meet in stellar expressing this to be part of a comprehensive and evolving project, and that is the right path need to caption the imagination of those costs. That's that's that's a really good approach. I think. Do you find that they're asking for natural wines or bio organic wines or lead to free wines? Is that something you hear a lot about when they're coming? I they, they search for emergency experience, both in their, I mean, natural wine or maybe their normal wine. They they really want to be part of something to know how we we reach this resulting product. So well, I think you're right. And I think they like to spend time in the vineyard they like to see where the grapes were growing. They really want as you said, immersive experience. It's been such a pleasure talking to you about this. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your time. And I hope you have a great time at wine to wine. For sure. For sure. Thank you very much. Thank you for listening, and remember to tune in next Wednesday when I'll be chatting with another fascinating guest. Italian wine podcast is among the leading wine podcast in the world and the only one with a daily show. Tune in every day and discover all our different shows. You can find us at Italian wine podcast dot com, SoundCloud, Spotify, Himalaya, or wherever you get your pods.