The 5th International Days of Enlightened Wine Lovers are co-organised by the Georges Chappaz Institute of Vine and Wine in Champagne and the VITAE association. They offer wine enthusiasts the opportunity to meet for two days around specific themes related to the wine industry, in particular sparkling wines for this edition.
A time for exchange and sharing, the international days take place every two years in a prestigious location and offer participants the opportunity to attend a symposium, a prestigious dinner and an international challenge for wine clubs.
The 5th edition will take place on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th June 2022 in Reims and Aÿ-Champagne.
Click here for the programme of the 5th Days
In July 2012, the VITAE Association conceived and initiated the first International Days of Enlightened Wine Lovers in Burgundy (Colloquium at the Château du Clos Vougeot, Prestige Dinner at the Comédie du Vin in Beaune, International Challenge of Wine Lovers Clubs CICO in Volnay).
This type of event has the advantage of bringing together in two days in a prestigious location what wine enthusiasts are looking for:
- To learn, to understand everything about wine: its history, its geography, its economy, its terroirs, its experts, its sanitary and environmental impacts, its evolutions, its winegrowers, to name but a few aspects. This is the purpose of the one-day symposium which brings together the best experts in the fields concerned around a theme chosen by the Scientific Committee,
- To share and discover other enlightened wine lovers, some of whom have come from far away with their favourite bottle. It is a very popular convivial meeting of prestige and sharing dinners in a remarkable place
- Discovering a local terroir, tasting, competing as a team in practical and theoretical tests on wine knowledge. This is the CICO (Challenge International des Clubs Œnophiles), which lasts one day and whose results are checked by a jury of experts. The winning teams are rewarded with valuable gifts.
VITAE (Vins Terroirs et Amateurs Eclairés), an association created in 2011 by wine enthusiasts, aims to discover, promote and appreciate terroir wines by organising exceptional events specially dedicated to enlightened wine lovers: International Days, Workshops.
VITAE is aimed at all wine lovers, initiated or neophyte, belonging or not to an oenophile club, who want to go further than a simple tasting and discover other facets of this unidentified cultural object that is wine.
The president of F.I.C.B. participated in the 4th edition in Châteauneuf-du-Pape in 2018, including the International Challenge of Wine Clubs. Links have thus been created with the VITAE Association, especially as the F.I.C.B. encourages the wine brotherhoods to promote expertise in wine tasting. The 1st F.I.C.B. International Wine Tasting Challenge took place in Finland in 2019. The 2nd will take place in Hungary in May 2024. The F.I.C.B. General Assembly decided in January 2022 to develop a “Guide for the organisation of competitions for the blind recognition of wine varietals” for the use of wine brotherhoods, which should be finalised in 2023.
To materialise the partnership between VITAE and the F.I.C.B., in addition to the publication of this article to announce the 5th Days, the F.I.C.B. will offer each participant in the International Challenge of Wine Clubs a copy of the F.I.C.B. multilingual lexicon in one of the 5 languages available (DE,EN,ES,FR,IT). dans l’une des 5 langues disponibles (DE,EN,ES,FR,IT).
