Merano Wine Festival, ready according to Covid-19 rules

A return to the origins of Italian wine, but looking to the present, digital tools, e-commerce, but also the rules imposed by the pandemic, with staggered access, with fever measurement at the entrance, redesigned rooms and ad hoc protective devices, including portable copper spittoon for each person, to ensure the safety of visitors and exhibitors, with the desire to move forward and give a positive signal to the world of wine and wine lovers. 

All this is the starting point for Helmut Köcher's Merano Wine Festival No. 29, planned from 6 to 10 November, in Merano, a "physical" event that adapts to and challenges the Corona virus. "First of all, you have to understand whether the events are economically sustainable, but I see what they do in Asia and Northern Europe, and that's why I decided to apply the rules that apply to catering in Merano today, because the Merano Wine Festival - Köcher said - is like a bar counter where you can taste a wine. Depending on the space, we expect up to 500 people between exhibitors and visitors, and 4 square meters of space per person.

In Kursaal last year there were 120 producers and 1,000 people inside, this year there will be a total of 300 people, at most 50 producers at the same time. And this of course means a reduction in the number of exhibitors and visitors (and journalists), because it will in any case be essential to find an economic balance that is more difficult than ever to find. Let's reconfirm all the historical events, with another key: there will be 2 meter tables, with two visitors per table with a distance of one meter between one and the other. There will be a fever measurement at the entrance, registration of people for safety reasons, as already happens in restaurants in Germany, access only based on the capacity of the room, we will also look at the ventilation. 

Whoever manages the table will receive a mask that we provide, and gloves - adds Köcher - and then the exhibitors and staff will have to test at Covid in the four days before the event. The visitor will have to have the mask (except at the time of the tasting), there will be disinfectants available, a medical clinic, and we will also evaluate a sanitary gate, like at airports, which does a complete disinfection of those who enter. There will also be a copper glass as a gadget, a kind of portable spittoon to avoid the risk of droplets, which will be emptied by everyone in special rooms. There will be mandatory paths to manage the flows, the entrance with numbers like the supermarket to access some tasting rooms and so on".

In short, a complicated picture, and ready to be overthrown, "because the virologists do not rule out a new wave in the fall, and if there is a new lockdown, we are ready to see everything digitally".

Communication information will also change a lot, and there will also be events taking place, looking at the web and social media. But we can only imagine coming back to tell the story of the areas and the producers of wines and products of Italian agriculture. Together. Live. It's human. That's why we have to think positively. Even if many things will not be as they used to be..."

And with this change, the Merano Wine Festival takes stock. "The 2020 Festival wants to give producers and visitors more physical space while respecting the rules of distance and hygiene that are currently in force - explains a press note - but also for another organisation of the times that will see the recording of a shift in two time slots, the first from 9 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. and the second from 2.30 p.m. to 7 p.m.. With Merano, therefore, trying to chart a course of events in the Covid era. As mentioned above, the main points are the careful distribution of spaces and the careful management of visitor flows.