Just recently Wine Paris-Vinexpo took place in Paris. It is one of the world’s biggest wine shows, in competition with Vinitaly in Verona and ProWein in Düsseldorf. We were of course there. There were a good number of exhibitors and more visitors than I expected. It was, of course, not quite like “before” but the show seemed to have been a great success. And it felt almost as if we were back to “normal”, to the good old times. Let’s hope it is the start for that. Here are my impressions.
Signals are flashing green around Wine Paris-Vinexpo. It seems to have been a great success. Over the three days of the show, Wine Paris received 25,739 visitors. 28% were foreigners with 109 countries represented. The biggest countries were Belgium, United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States. Quite a big and positive surprise that there were so many “Americans”. Some people were expecting almost no Americans, so this was a good surprise. There were 2864 exhibitors. Over-all, I think that is very respectable numbers.
This is a longer version of an article published on Forbes.com.
Compared to the last edition, it is slightly less. In 2020 there were 29,280 visitors from 126 countries and 2,800 exhibitors. Nevertheless, the 2022 edition must be better than expected.
Compared to ProWein, Wine Paris is smaller. The German fair is, or was, much bigger. In 2019 it had 61,500 visitors from an impressive 142 countries and 6,900 exhibitors. The next ProWein will take place on May 15-17 in Düsseldorf this year.
Vinitaly is even bigger. 125,000 visitors in 2019, 145 countries and 4,600 exhibitors. The next edition will be in Verona on 10-13 April 2022.
But Wine Paris has some things going for it. The German show in Düsseldorf is difficult to travel to, it is a small city (comparatively) and visiting or exhibiting at the show can be both difficult (if you don’t plan a year ahead) and expensive. “You pay 200 euros for a simple hotel room and it does not even have a private bathroom”, as one exhibitor said. Paris, on the other hand, is hardly affected even by very large numbers of visitor to a show. The Paris Motor Show has more than one million visitors (!). As for Vinitaly, many say that it is no doubt the best for Italian wines, but for anything outside of Italy, well, you have to look hard. And Verona is not a big city either.
The three years of Wine Paris
Three years ago, in 2019, the first edition of Wine Paris took place in the French capital (26,700 visitors). It was an odd constellation of three brands, Vinisud (a long-established and successful show for “southern” wines) that had moved up from Montpellier in the south of France, Vinovision, which was a newly created showcase for “northern” wines, both under the umbrella brand of Wine Paris. It felt confused, and confusing, lacking a clear identity.
At the same time, Vinexpo started to feel a bit tired. Was it becoming too regional? Just for the big French brands for the French customers? I did not go there regularly, but when I was there, it felt like a showcase for big brands, for those who had millions in marketing budgets and not really for those interested in more personal wines that were not marketing driven (which was Vinisud’s strong point). So in 2019, Vinexpo had its last Bordeaux edition and decided to leave its home in Bordeaux and move up to Paris.
Conflict and then collaboration in 2020
This resulted in that the following year, in 2020, the two big French shows (Wine Paris/Vinisud and Vinexpo) were both planning to be in Paris, on dates close to each other but separately. Crazy. Two wine shows in Paris in close succession… They quickly realised that this would never work, so they joined forces and made a joint show: Wine Paris-VinExpo 2020.
It worked, but not very well – speaking from a visitor’s / journalist’s perspective. It felt disjointed. Two shows in one, with a confusing identity. Family businesses with wines of character at one end, gigantic wine and spirits groups with glitter brands at the other end. On top of that came covid, just starting in February 2020. The Chinese stand at the show was empty. China had closed. But the show still happened.
In 2021 it did not happen. There was no Wine Paris. The pandemic had put a stop to all such events.
Comes 2022.
It was long uncertain – or at least it felt so to us and to many exhibitors – if there would be a Wine Paris in 2022. How fast would France open up to bigger events like this?
Fast enough, as it were. Wine Paris – Vinexpo 2022 did take place, has just taken place only a week ago.
“How was it for you?”
Now, after the show’s last day, it seems to have been a great success.
Britt and I spent all three days at the show and asked everyone we met, “how has it been for you?”
The response has been quite overwhelming. Yes, there were fewer visitors. Yes, there were fewer exhibitors. But there are still smiles all around (at least almost everywhere).
The unanimous reaction is, “we are so happy that it has taken place; that almost in itself makes it a success.” Some people say, “we have seen fewer visitors here at our stand this year than we did in 2020”, but then they follow up with “, but it is much more than we had expected, or feared, so it’s been a good show for us.”
Travel is still a challenge, especially for overseas visitors. As one of the exhibitors we talked to said, “we didn’t expect to see any Americans at all. But we have had some that have managed to come here. No Chinese, of course. But there have been people from other parts of Asia and almost all over the world”. We also had the occasion to meet with some people from Ukraine, that we wished good luck. But most of the visitors were from Europe.
When we talked to journalists visiting the show, the reactions have been similar. “There are clearly fewer crowds here this year. But that’s good. You don’t have to fight your way to the stands and elbow forward to have a chance to talk to the wine producers.” That certainly makes it a much more productive show for the media.
The final count of visitors and exhibitors show that numbers are down, but not by much (see above). And everyone we talked to said “better than what we expected”.
The show also feels much more coherent than the previous version. You might have noticed that I generally say “Wine Paris” here in the text, although the full name is Wine Paris Vinexpo. It felt like one show now, not two glued together (although there was a bling-bling section with the luxury brands, for those who really want it). Perhaps next year it will simply be Wine Paris?
Will this be the new international leader in wine shows? Perhaps. It has a lot going for it. We’ll see in 2023.
For us personally, Wine Paris has been excellent. Thanks to the time we could spend with some of the producers, we have collected material for several future articles. We had the chance to go through in detail the full ranges of some exciting champagne producers that will feed into the second edition of our big book on Champagne and the Champagne growers. And most importantly, we have said hello face-to-face to many people that we have not seen at all for two or three years.
Yes, Wine Paris 2022 feels like the beginning of the return to (the new) normal for the wine business.
The next Wine Paris will be on February 13-15, 2023 (unfortunately for us, since we will be touring the South African vineyards on one of our wine tours at that time).
