The first World Wine Symposium dubbed as the “Davos of Wine” was held in luxurious Villa d’Este in Italy end of October 2009. The idea of organising one of the industry key events comes from Francois Mauss, president of the Grand Jury Europeen. His initiative was supported by the owners of five top ranking wine estates whom Mauss now calls the symposium’s godfathers. They are Alain Vauthier (Chateau Ausone), Angelo Gaja (Gaja), Egon Muller (Weingut Egon Muller), Aubert de Villaine (Domaine de la Romanee-Conti) and Pablo Alvarez (Vega Sicilia).
Besides there were around 250 wine professionals that came to the event from as far as Singapore, USA, Canada, India, etc. Not only winemakers were there, but also wine investment fund managers, physicists, a representative of the French Ministry of Agriculture and even an opera singe, with important wine personalities such as Joel Payne,  Michel Bettane, Olivier Humbrecht , Elin McCoy,  Stephane Derenoncourt.

The conference had many interesting seminars, such as Angelo Gaja’s -The evolution of Italian wine and the Importance of wine tourism by Willy Klinger, the Director of Austrian Wine Marketing Board and offered many gastro- oenological  pleasures. With Michelin-starred chefs aided by the resident chef of Villa d’Este, each meal was a multi-course cuisine with over 8-10 wines and pleased everybody.

Croatia also got its share. Sunday was dedicated to our presentation- wine tasting of some 60 Croatian wines followed by lunch prepared by Sonja Peric, chef of the famous Valsabbion restaurant. With the interesting and creative presentation of typical Croatian foods and delicacies such as raw shrimps, Boskarin tartare, Clams in salt and Fuzi with truffles the guests has the opportunity to taste the best Croatia has to offer. It was a great introduction of Croatia to the world’s elite as a country of fine wines and gourmet food. For most people it was a good opportunity to try Croatian wines for the first time or discover that Croatia also has white truffles and very high quality olive oil. We believe this was only the first step in “forwarding” Croatia around the world.

Croatian Chamber of Commerce made it possible for Croatia to take part in this interesting event.