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Uncorking wine knowledge in Sanya
Pier Giuseppe Torresani, Export and Travel Retail Sales Director for renowned Italian wine house Masi Agricola, recently conducted a duo of training sessions for China Duty Free Group staff in Hainan province.
The sessions, held in Sanya on 31 May, aimed to enhance the employees’ knowledge and expertise, ensuring they are well-equipped to represent Masi’s prestigious Italian wine offerings.
The Moodie Davitt Report Haikou-based Asia Pacific Content Strategist Lara Netherlands was in attendance and later sat down with Torresani for an exclusive interview. During this conversation, he elaborated on the key objectives of the training, emphasising the importance of keeping the content simple and relatable for young store staff.
He highlighted the critical role of these training sessions in empowering staff to communicate effectively with customers, thereby enhancing the overall consumer experience.
Torresani’s insights into the unique challenges and opportunities of the Hainan market, combined with his reflections on his own career journey, provide a compelling narrative of quality wine-making, professional dedication and long-term vision that collectively augur well for Masi’s presence in China and the wider Asia region.
Among the four wines that were introduced to the trainees, which one would Pier Giuseppe Torresani be if he was a bottle of wine? Discover the answer in our exclusive interview below conducted by Lara Netherlands (whom Torresani describes as a “super-premium Riesling”) on location in Sanya.
(Left to right) The Moodie Davitt Report Asia Pacific Content Strategist Lara Netherlands; Masi Export and Travel Retail Sales Director Pier Giuseppe Torresani; Hainan University School of International Studies Associate Professor (and translator for Torresani’s training sessions in Sanya) Feng Jun
The Moodie Davitt Report: What are the main goals of your training with the store staff? Which specific skills form your main area of focus?
Pier Giuseppe Torresani: From my experience in other areas, the attendants’ wine knowledge is not very high. The store staff are young people who have probably not been doing this job for long. And most of them are not always working in the wine area – they work in other areas too such as confectionery, spirits and perfume.
Adding value to the bottles on the shelf. Staff listen intently as Torresani introduces four of the Masi wines.
I suspect that this young crowd – in fact, they are very young – have probably never attended a real wine presentation. Wine is very complicated. It takes ages to learn and build up decent knowledge about the subject
You never really stop learning about wine. I have met many top wine experts – wine critics and wine journalists – and the common factor is that they are very humble because they know that they don’t know enough. You can always learn something new because it is such a diverse and complicated field.
When I do a training session like this, I try to keep it as simple as possible and stay focused on a few key messages. And so when they pick up a bottle on the shelf, and they have to talk to someone about this bottle, they have those three or four concepts in their mind to translate to the consumer.
So it is about adding some value to that bottle. For most consumers the bottles on the shelf don’t mean anything. But if you can inform the consumer through a few words and explain that it comes from the Venetian area, it is crafted with this technique, from these local grapes, and there is a family behind the story – that adds value to the bottle on the shelf.
How important are these training sessions to meet the specific needs of travel retail, especially in a location such as Hainan?
It is very important because, again, if the store staff have low knowledge on this subject, most of the consumers probably have even less knowledge. And so it is a word-of-mouth chain that takes shape. Most communication takes place like that.
From vineyard to shelf. A chain of communication forms as Torresani addresses the CDFG team.
You train someone who will train someone else, and that trainee will train the next person. Because if this consumer learns something from the store staff, they will go home with a bottle and be proud of it.
They can then tell a bit of the story to their friends and family. And then maybe their friends and family can share that story with others. So it forms a chain of communication. That’s why it’s very important to do this kind of training with the staff; it is a starting point for me, and for the winery, to reach the final consumer.
How do you view the relevance of Hainan within the Chinese market?
We started with China Duty Free Group and we got off to a great start from our shipment point to them. On the other hand, Hainan is still developing. There are other players that have entered and that are coming in such as Lagardère Travel Retail and DFS. So I wouldn’t say we are at the start, there is still a long way to go.
Masi Agricola has expanded its global footprint, growing its distribution network to nearly 140 countries
The staff had the privilege of sampling the Costasera Lunar – New Year of the Dragon, a limited-edition Masi Amarone Costasera 2018. This unique expression was conceived and developed in partnership with CDFG.
Wine is still a small category here. I assume it is going to continue growing in Asia and China, and more specifically in Hainan, because there is already a good base to start from. And there is more to come. I suspect there is a good opportunity to grow here in the future.
What do you prioritise in your training sessions?
Less is more. Have only a few concepts for each presentation slide; keep the text minimal, as that encourages people to read. And include various, clear imagery.
What do you believe is the most underrated aspect of training? And reflecting on your career, how has your experience shaped the way you impart knowledge to store staff?
Simplicity is the most underrated aspect – not only with regards to training, but also in terms of how we communicate wine. I am not an expert at training. However, I have been on both sides of training sessions many times and there are some elements which I believe are very important.
When we are communicating wine, we tend to talk to ourselves. We often focus too much on the technical details – which are not always easily understood by consumers – and we miss the importance of basics.
On this occasion, we are not training wine experts. When talking to a wine journalist or sommelier it would be a different story. Most people working in the wine industry are knowledgeable about wine – you need to be – because it’s so complex and so technical.
But most of the consumers are not. I would even say that 90% of wine drinkers are not experts. So we need to find a way to communicate wine in a sensible way, in a way that is simple so the concepts can be understood. For this kind of communication, it is not necessary to go into every single technical aspect.
You need to communicate at the audience level and adapt the message to them. Find content that can be informative but not too difficult. In this case, the store staff are young, inexperienced in the subject of wines, and they change and rotate roles frequently.
For this type of audience, you need to keep the message as simple as possible. Focus on some key messages which can even be repeated a few times and will hopefully then be easy to transfer to the final consumers.
“You need to communicate at the audience level and adapt the message to them,” says Pier Giuseppe Torresani on the topic of training
Torresani captivates the audience with an introduction to the diverse and rich Venetian wine region
Under these circumstances there are extra challenges such as the language barrier. I had to use a translator. And although Mr Feng was really good, there is always something that gets misinterpreted or lost in translation. Furthermore, the knowledge of Italy and Italian wines in Asia is much lower than in other regions of the world. So, you need to start from the basics and slowly go deeper.
During this morning’s training session, I tried to touch on some key aspects that make up the wines, without going into any kind of complex details. Overall, you need to make the audience comfortable and avoid scaring them away from the topic.
I prefer to tell them in advance that wine is a difficult and complex subject – you learn day by day and you never stop learning. Finding an easy, simple and approachable language and focusing on key messages would serve well when trying to let the message reach the consumer.
During your first training session this morning you told the story of the Boscaini family who own Masaia. Can you walk us through the significance of telling that story to staff?
The story of the family is very important in any such business, but even more so with wine because it is a long-term business. You need to wait for results – in terms of both quality and finance.
If you invest in a vineyard, it takes 10 to 15 to 20 years to get that investment back. If you plant a vineyard, it takes four or five years before you get good grapes. And when you make the wine, the same recipe is repeated over a year, ten years, 20 years and 100 years.
The Masi story began in 1772, when the Boscaini family carried out their first harvest in the prestigious vineyards in Vaio dei Masi, a valley in the heart of the Valpolicella Classica region. This is where the company name emanates, and it remains a family-owned business, now actively run by the sixth and seventh generations.
Having a family behind the brand that knows this – where the primary goal is not just short-term financial revenue but rather a long-term project – is very important to the family that has been living with this concept for a very long time.
And we observe tension when wineries are managed by funders or investors who are in a hurry and seek immediate results. They do not accept that you can have a really good year and the following year may not be as good due to a challenging harvest or a market that went down for some reason. In wine, you need to accept that and see things from a long-term perspective.
Families like the Boscaini family really understand that. They look ahead and try to not only anticipate trends but also formulate them.
This morning, for example, we were talking about Amarone and wine crafted from mixed techniques. The mixed technique mentioned was invented by Masi. Amarone was not invented by Masi, but Masi was one of the first wineries to understand and invest in Amarone to elevate its quality. That’s why this family is so important to the brand.
Has your career taken a similar journey to the winery’s story? Were there certain areas or chapters that required patience to see results?
Yes, absolutely. I entered the wine business 15 years ago, having come from a different industry. My goal was to enter the wine business because I like wine as a product and I thought I could do well and have a nice job with a product that I liked. In fact, I ended up liking it very much. I was lucky enough to have entered Masi 15 years ago and I’m still there.
Having completed his degree in Business Administration, and after working in various industries, Torresani went to Bordeaux to complete his Master’s degree in Wine Business before returning to his roots and joining Masi Agricola 15 years ago
Over time, passion, expertise and knowledge paid for my personal career. I started as an export manager, then I took responsibility for the European market with a team of people.
Five years ago I took the responsibility of all the exports. So yes, I was not in a hurry to grow. I was happy to grow. And when growth took place, I was pleased. I never asked for that to happen – it happened over time. And I am pleased with where I am today.
What do you most enjoy about working for Masi?
What I enjoy most is the long-term thinking I was talking about earlier. I worked in sports and fashion before, in which both have a very short cycle of production. It is an amazing environment; I loved it because it was so exciting and energetic. But in those industries you never slow down and have the time to think. It’s a continuous cycle of rushing. Sometimes it’s nice to have the time to think a bit more and to plan things ahead, and wine gave me that opportunity.
Wine is a social product. Normally you share glasses of wine with people, you enjoy a bottle together. Today, you can have wine by the glass, but the tradition of wine is to open a bottle and share it with someone.
And so, it’s part of the business to be social – and it’s a simple and effortless kind of social. You sit down, have a meal, enjoy a glass of wine – and that’s part of my job, what I am paid for. That’s the beauty of the wine business.
The wine linguist shakes hands with the language linguist. Pier Giuseppe Torresani thanks Hainan University School of International Studies Associate Professor Feng Jun who expertly translated two fruitful training sessions.
It’s not only that, of course. There is also the business power. The other components which I enjoy involving the business side are aspects such as margins and pricing. Problem solving and finding win-win solutions throughout the entire cycle are among what I find fascinating.
You introduced four kinds of Masi wines to the store staff this morning, three of which were sampled. If you were one of those four wines, which one would you be, and why?
I think I would be Nectar Campofiorin because it’s a very balanced wine, it’s elegant. I’m not saying that I’m elegant, but the other wines presented this morning are more extreme in different ways and this is more balanced and elegant. It could fit in on many occasions; I can fit in different settings. It’s easy for me to adapt.
For example, this is my first time to visit China. And I think I would get on easily here. I’ve lived in different places in Europe. So that’s why, just as Nectar Campofiorin can adapt and be paired with many kinds of food, I can adapt and get along with different people.
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