Key Sentence:
- When the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, the founders and organizers of the wine festival had to go crazy – loud.
Some canceled in hopes of better luck in 2021, while others turned 100% live events into 100% virtual events in the fall. A woman accomplished this difficult feat for a week-long celebration of New York’s most famous French balloon.
Blaine Ashley, known as “Champagne Blaine,” started the first Pandemic Champagne Week in New York in November 2013. This week aims to promote the champagne category through creative events. Experience sharing, branding, the discovery of new versions, interactive tastings, seminars, etc. Last year, Ashley had to transfer the energy of hands-on experiences to virtual national events. While creating new ones that were tackled with logistical and creative strategies.
As the pandemic subsides, Ashley returns for vacation this year with a hybrid model that includes seven virtual events and three private tickets to Manhattan. Ashley talked to Forbes about the challenges and lessons learned in keeping an event going through the global crisis and highlighted events to look forward to this year.
This is your 8th year! How has the Pandemic event progressed from the start?
I spent most of the summer of 2013 all over France. While there, I wrote a monthly column for Destinations Travel, aptly named “Jet Set Sip.” As part of my long journey. I was invited to VinExpo, one of the largest wine festivals in the world, held every two years in Bordeaux and during non-working years in Hong Kong.
While waiting in the hotel lobby for transportation to the exhibition, I met a Swedish opera sommelier. He asked if I wanted to go with him, on one condition: we only had to try the champagne when he opened the champagne bar inside the opera. Yes indeed!
While tasting all the champagne and meeting so many unique producers I’d never heard of, I had an “Aha” entrepreneurial moment – I was about to start New York Champagne Week. That was in June 2013. So I went back and began work in early July. And in November 2013, I started my first week at Champagne in New York.
The main difference between then also now is that I initially set up a clearinghouse to introduce a new manufacturer that wasn’t even available in the US at the time but hoped to find distribution. My target audience is dealers, buyers, and the press hoping.
That this unknown champagne house will become a literal home in the country.
We have become a slowly but surely champagne lover event and are supported by many well-known brands. Which is very important for marketing opportunities to promote the champagne category as a whole successfully.
In March 2020, I kept hearing zoom, zoom, zoom … and thought to myself: “What?! Then I started digging into Zoom events via my sister’s platform; The FIZZ is Female, which celebrates sparkling wines from around the world made, owned, and run strongly by women (CEOs, I believe).
I started a two-week “Women in a Bubble” event on a Wednesday in late April, and from there. I tried to work with an e-commerce partner to deliver wine packages to visitors to this event. From here, I developed and expanded a national user base and had the confidence to create a fantastic virtual. Event calendar for the 7th VERY annual Virtual Champagne Week in New York. Which is not only super interactive and champagne-filled but accurate. Pleasant.
We host events like Pol Roger’s Champagne Opening Party, led by a sommelier from New York’s famous Per Se restaurant. She is also a trained opera professional and plays the aria as part of the event.