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Originally a tennis player, he moved into tennis coaching and worked at the Bollettieri Tennis Academy, training home of superstars such as Monica Seles and Andre Agassi. Later on became captain and manager of Chile’s female tennis team for the Barcelona Olympics. Campo then created a sports & event management company, which eventually branched into high profile music events, featuring superstar acts from Enrique Iglesias to Sting or Tom Jones. He founded the Wine Academy of Spain in 2003 and developed the Spanish Wine Education international certification programme. He is best known for his international conferences, including the World Conference on Climate Change & Wine in 2006, 2008 and 2011. Just before his Winefuture 09 event in Rioja, Campo resigned as director after an outstanding warrant issued by the UAE became public knowledge. In July 2010, Interpol removed the location warrant. His latest event was Winefuture 11 in Hong Kong, featuring wine world luminaries, including Robert Parker.
After the excitement of managing major sporting and music events, how did you come to be holding wine events?
Since the age of 14 I had this interest in wine after my dad took me to visit a winery in Chile. Even when I was a tennis player I continued reading, getting hold of every book or magazine I could and visiting wineries. In 2002 my wife and I decided to return to Spain after spending more than eight years in the Middle East where we had our events management company.
Upon my return to Marbella, I decided to dedicate more time to my long time passion... wine. I started attending tasting courses, visiting wineries and studying wine in depth. Our original idea was to open a wine bar called 'Backstage' that was going to be decorated with all the memorabilia from my tennis days, as well as with pictures from our concerts and events. Unfortunately, we didn´t have the funds needed for such project.I realized that there were lots of expats living in the Costa del Sol interested to learn about Spanish wines. So I started to think, maybe I could give tastings in English. In 2003, we registered The Wine Academy. There was more and more demand because people liked the way I approached wine. It was going to be local initially, but I started reading Jancis Robinson’s website and thought maybe I could do a conference with this lady. I decided to do a symposium with her as a keynote speaker together with some top Spanish wine personalities and it ended up being national and huge. We had a massive attendance – 250 when I wanted 150. That led us to grow.
Jancis said that I should consider offering WSET courses in Spain. I went to a tasting in London and three months later we were doing WSET courses in Spain. Jancis suggested I should enrol the MW programme and it started a little sparkle inside me. A year and a half later, I decided to give it a try. I owe Jancis a lot.
What was your first breakthrough wine event?
The climate change |
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event in Barcelona. It was small in numbers, but huge in media attendance. We made it big when we brought Al Gore to Spain, even though he appeared via video conference. Initially he was supposed to come in person, but a month before the event there was a series of tornadoes in Nashville and he thought he would be heavily criticised if he wasn’t in town.
How did you get Al Gore involved with a wine event?
Because the first climate change and wine conference had little impact, my wife told me to get Al Gore, so I started Googling and found out what he was doing about the environment. Then I said to my wife, how do we get hold of this guy? And she said, you got Sting and Pink Floyd, you can get him. So I rang someone I’d done business with in the past and explained what I was doing. He said, “I can lead you straight to him, because our agency represents him”. He ran an agency for speaking engagements, which represents Nelson Mandela, Clinton, Gore. Once you get into this circle you find yourself in a group of people dealing with these names. The hardest person to get turned out to be Robert Parker but the one I admire the most is Richard Branson and so far I have failed to get him to one of our events.
So how did you get Parker to come to your events?
It was through [wine educator] Kevin Zraly. I’d approached Parker but been turned down, and Kevin said “I can help you. Send a letter with a description of what you want to do.” Robert Parker had two issues. One was conflict of interest. He said if his participation could be seen as an endorsement of a wine region or winery, it was a no-go. The second was he thought it was bad timing. It was 2008 and the recession was rampant in the USA. I said it was important at such a time to discuss what the industry will be facing. He was sceptical that we would get the numbers, because of the recession. We got triple the numbers of people we were expecting. When I told him it was going to be in Rioja, he said I had to put it in writing that they were just the sponsor and that he was not endorsing Rioja. They could not use him in a public appearances as endorsement or promotion of the region.
The worlds of sports and event management are very different. What surprised you about the wine industry?
Two things. One is that it is a very closed environment, especially in Spain. As soon as I started to make noise, the sacred cows started: who the hell does he think he is? This is our business! Our territory! I thought I would be welcomed, because I was coming in with new marketing ideas. I was also surprised to see the way that wine was marketed, sold and promoted. It was so ancient. I thought, hold on, maybe this could be my contribution – to bring in new ideas and fresh ways to organize wine events.
Have things changed?
Yes they have. I have always had the support of the bodegas, the wineries, Miguel Torres, Perelada, Carlos Falco |
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and Freixenet, amogst many others. It was the wine writers and critics who thought I was an opportunist. Now, at least, many of them are not criticising.
What do you see as the biggest issue facing the global wine trade?
For me climate change, but I’ll put it aside because we don’t have total control over it. The business side we do have control over. We are losing consumers, which is for me the most worrying challenge. The wine industry is not exciting potential consumers. Although Asia has grown tremendously, consumption is dropping overall in the Old World. The Millennials do not look at wine as cool or exciting. There is a slight exception in America, where wine is seen differently, but it’s not enough in the global context to affect world consumption. Things are worrying in Europe: Spain is number 26 and going down. For most European countries, wine is losing the fun and the next generation is not engaging with it.
What’s the problem?
I think it’s completely the fault of the industry. The way we communicate is only understood by wine people; 90% of people who write or blog about wine look only at the top wines, the ones above €25.00. These are wines for experts and serious aficionados. What makes the industry tick is the bottom of the pyramid, the wines below €7.00, but we pay no respect to those wines or those consumers.
Is more education the key?
I am so totally against “we need to educate the consumer”. Somebody says “I know nothing about wine” and we say, “oh! You should take a course!” No you don’t. If I go to a restaurant, I don’t want to take a course to understand the cheese. I just want a hedonistic experience. It will be ruined if someone tells me I can’t have the cheese unless I do a course. Who needs to be educated is the trade on how to communicate, promote and sell wine.
What would you change?
The way that wine is sold. The wine world relies on ratings, wine fairs, competitions and guided tastings, just like it has for the last 50 years. Maybe the props are more modern – they used to use posters and now they have plasma screens – but the concept is the same. Consumers in Spain don’t care very much about ratings, it’s the trade who cares. In America, there are only one or two trade fairs and 95% are consumer events. What they are doing is creating more and more demand. So that’s number one. I would strongly suggest to most European wineries and wine regions that they should look at motivating the consumer in a very modern and easygoing way, because that will create demand. Then the restaurant will go to the importer and say “I want this wine because my customers are asking for it”. But we have totally neglected the consumer in Europe.
What’s the answer?
We have to focus on getting the Millennials |
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excited about wine or we will have too much wine and not enough consumers. People say wine is not visual. Let’s make it visual. Look at any television in the world and you can see lots of chefs and gastronomy and cooking programs. If you have a chef cooking, why not add wine?
This comes back to education. People in Europe are not badly educated in wine – they are badly educated in selling wine and promoting wine and getting customers excited about wine. Instead of educating the consumer, you have to educate the trade. There are so many distributors I have trained and I think “my God, how can you sell this product?” They can’t get their best friend excited about wine, so how are they going to excite the customer? They know too much about wine. They know about malolactic fermentation – but what consumer gives a damn about that? They should be concerned instead with how to do a good presentation to get a buyer hooked on wine.
I get tired of people inviting me to a vertical tasting of such and such or that seminar on the use of oak or on terroir. I rarely get invited on how to design a wine list for a bar or a nice wine by the glass programme I don’t see any of that.
Everyone seems to think that Asia is the solution. What do you think?
We speak about Asia like we speak about France or Spain. China is bigger than the whole European Union; it’s a huge continent with all sort of different nationalities who think and act differently from one another. We can’t talk about ‘Asia’ as a unit; we can’t even talk about China as a unit, as what happens in Beijing has no impact in Shanghai. With so many nationalities and ethnic groups, the way you deal with each of them is different. That’s been my biggest surprise. Within the same country, China, you have to have different approaches. They have been trading for 5,000 years and you can’t expect to do business with them online. You have to get on a plane and go there and have lots of meetings. They have to be able to see you in person and look you in the eye; it’s a matter of trust. Also, we have to understand the mentality and each idiosincracy. If you gain their trust, then you go into the second phase where you discuss business. Once you go through those stages, it goes very fast, but initially it’s slow.
What mistakes do you see people making in Asia?
It’s not as developed as people think it is. Let me put it this way. At the moment what I see in China are two groups. There’s the top of the pyramid with the Premier Crus. There’s also a lot of trade going on at the bottom of the pyramid, at less than €5.00. The middle, where the future will lie, is completely empty. The category is empty. But that’s where 80% of the wineries of the world fall into. If people think they’re going to go to China and make a killing, they won’t. The only ones making a killing are the Premier Crus, as well as some entry level and bulk wines. There is a huge opportunity for everyone else, but it’s going to take a lot of time and investment.
You’ve been very critical of the approach of the Old World. What do you think about the New World approach?
The big advantage of the New World is that most of the people trading in wine are highly qualified from a business point of view. Look at the guys from Concha y Toro or Gallo. They are young guys, they have Masters degrees in business or marketing and they’re very active, very energetic. The New World guys, they get on a plane and go and make a nice presentation, and they do it regularly. Many Old World wineries have people who don’t speak English – or they speak bad English – and they’re not business or market oriented and they don’t want to get on the plane. There’s nothing wrong with their wine, but they don’t realise that wine is a business. This is the reality.
What is the wine trade getting right?
The one thing the wine industry is getting right at the moment is that there are fantastic wines made all over the world. The diversity of styles and the high quality that can be found in most regions are the stepping stones for achieving greatness in any field.
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