The World Congress was launched in 2006 to raise awareness of climate change within the wine industry. It is aimed at oenologists, scientists, winemakers, wine merchants and sommeliers. In April 2011, the congress took place for the third time in Marbella, Spain, with 350 participants from 40 countries. The event was organised by the Spanish Wine Academy. Solutions for mitigating the problem of climate change were developed and an environmentally sustainable economic model for the wine industry was presented. The VIP guest speaker was former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. He spoke about the international initiative "The Global Compact", which demands more responsibility from business and society for ecological challenges and assigns them the leading role in sustainable development. Other prominent speakers were, for example, Daniele Cernilli, former editor-in-chief of the wine guide Gambero Rosso, the Californian wine journalist James Suckling, as well as the French organic winegrower Nicolas Joly. From the mid-1990s, Cool Climate Winegrowing became popular in connection with climate change, i.e. planting vines in higher areas with continental climatic conditions.
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Egon Mark
Diplom-Sommelier, Weinakademiker und Weinberater, Volders (Österreich)