So let me take a short moment to say it was a blast.

The Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature is a grand old building with a huge subterranean portion that kept us warm while Paris was blanketed in snow.  It’s also full of hilarious chandeliers and lustres made of various bones, antlers and minerals.  Awesome place.

The food was delicious.  Seriously good.  Probably tied with the Grenache Symposium in that respect (although the GS lasted a few days so they probably still sit in first place).  And the wines at the tasting that night were interesting too.

Vinternet got a good group of people together.  It looked like there were a solid 60-70 people there from various parts of the wine business.  A lot of producers, which I liked.

Tragically, the interprofession was not very present and I think that these big picture organizational types are the ones who could have profited the most from the conference.  In other cases, you have folks like the Vignerons du Luberon, cooperateurs in that part of France.  They loved the presentations but when you ask them how these ideas will be implemented at the cave, they smile knowingly.  Their boss will shoot these web ideas down instantly.  Sad that the boss couldn’t be there.  We might have converted him or galvanized him but the point is there would have been an exchange.

But let’s not get all depressed.  There were some folks there with more instrumental organizational roles.  The national level of les Vignerons Indépendants were present and charming.  I liked their style and they were much more receptive than some of the VI folks who I have met on the departmental level here in Aude.

The Languedoc was well-represented.  At various points throughout the day I discovered I was sitting next to somebody from the region.  I finally got to see Olivier Lebaron (from Terre de Vin / Vitisphere) IRL.  And I met the directeur from Anne de Joyeuse who also had a wine involved in the live tasting that night.  And of course, I’ve already mentioned Midi-Vin’s coverage of the conference.

Other posts that touch on vin 2.0:

• Vindicateur – Is wine criticism turning into stand up comedy?
• Musigny – I don’t know who this is (maybe Grégoire Japiot?) but it seems they streamed the whole conference on their iPhone!!
• Wise Queen – something

Here’s a video of Anne-Marie Charvet, Prefect of Aude, starting the assembly:

And a video of the National Director of the Vignerons Indépendants:

Roland Courteau, Senator of Aude, speaks about the anti-wine lobby in Paris:

The DDTM (Direction Départementale des Territoires et de la Mer) did the closing speech which proved to be just a bit too long for me to capture.  These guys had way more batteries than my poor little Flip.