Lisbon, Part Three

UNLIKE the majority of summits and symposiums, Bacchus’ ferment was a constant bedfellow at the European Wine Bloggers Conference. Held at the ‘VIP’ Grand Lisboa, an angular, orange pen for drab suits, with pebbly feng shui bits and a bar menu boasting ‘bee fillet’ (the sting was in the price) I hope our conference room made other guests jealous. Pallets of crystal glasses stretched across tabletops like an alcoholic Fairy Challenge. Between sips, spurts and even a little singing, delegates quietly beamed their thoughts on pressing concerns as diverse as personal grooming to one another from laptops and BlackBerry phones using that crack cocaine of social media – ‘Twitter’. The grown-up equivalent of passing notes around a classroom.

Outside such formality, participants let their hair down, like this: