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NEW NORMAL

Final Publisher´s Thoughts, Figures and Statistics

We don‘t know exactly how much coffee the working team members have drunk in the last
two months, but it was definitely a lot. We started work on the Czech edition of this project
on October 22, 2020. The special issue of the Czech SOMMELIER Magazine, „Nový Normál,“ was
published on January 21, 2021 without a single day of rest. Due to the success of the Czech edi-
tion, we jumped immediately into working on this global NEW NORMAL edition; we started on
January 24th. We managed to create, finish and share this international e-book with you in
only two months!
For the rest of my life, we will remain grateful to a small group of friends - our working team,
who helped make this project happen. Please, give them a moment of attention; their intro-
ductions are on pages 12 - 13. They deserve it.
There are 107 co-authors from 28 countries in this book! We are grateful that 30 experts
from the Czech Republic shared their knowledge and experience with us, 23 from the USA, 10 from
France, 6 from Great Britain, 4 Germans, 3 Belgians and 3 Canadians. We then have two contribu-
tors who added insight for Argentina, Spain, Ireland, Israel, Moldova, The Netherlands, Portugal,
and South Africa, and by one Austria, Georgia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, India, Japan, Chile, Roma-
nia, South Korea, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Zimbabwe. This is an impressive list for any publication!
We sent 2874 e-mails from our main office in the Czech Republic alone. Hundreds more have
been sent and countless phone calls from offices in Strasbourg, New Mexico, Rochester, and
Montréal.
We´ve been successful in 56% of the requests for cooperation in publishing this book with
people providing texts, photos, graphs, and other valuable information. Only 6 respondents di-
rectly refused to cooperate.
Of the almost 2,000 emails requesting sponsorship or offering to advertise, 96% remained
unanswered. Many of them we urged at least 3 times - work that fell to the publisher. For com-
panies with millions of turnovers, we were not worth the time for a single e-mail even though
what we asked for was the equivalent of one business lunch. As a collection of professionals that
have worked to promote many of these companies, we expected to at least receive a response.
During our parents‘ time and even when I was young, it was etiquette to at the very least
reply to the letter and write “no, sorry, hard times, thank you”.
We even received only one scolding letter. Our job was to reach the maximum of cooperage
brands properly and with all respect. Seguin Moreau made good PR on it, the other bosses refer-
red us to so-called „service de presse“ of the Féderation des Tonneliers de France; This way they
lost the chance to address winemakers worldwide with their news. My psychotherapist told to
me that „service de presse“ was apparently having a very bad day out of „service.“ We hope that
that was the case and it will be on much happier terms that we meet again.

When the Iron Curtain fell 30 years ago, we chanted „We are not like them! “ and I still hear it
in my ears today, we live by it.
And this publication is not like the rest.

That is why we have decided to dedicate the results of our work to you, the winemakers and
traders, completely free of charge. This labor of love is for your benefit, we hope you enjoy it!

Michele Padberg Luboš Bárta Iva Bárta Kováříková
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