Paris. Valentine’s Week. What’s not to like? There will be plenty of visitors to next month’s Wine Paris that will be looking to make the most of celebrating wine in this wonderful city.
It’s pretty appropriate that Paris should be the host for the inaugural wine show event that bring together two already established, respected shows, Vinisud and VinoVision, to create a new event Wine Paris, as this is the city that has been named as the world’s wine capital of the world. Well, in terms of wine consumption that is.
A study, by JFL Conseil and XJ Conseil, analysing the importance of the world’s major cities when it comes to drinking wine, commissioned by Wine Paris, found that not only do 54.9% of the world’s population live in a city, when it comes to drinking wine that percentage goes up considerably. In England 83% of wine drinkers live in a city, closely followed by 82% in the US, 80% in France and Spain and 77% in Germany.
Break that down by city and the population of Paris got through an impressive 5.3m hectolitres of wine, or 709m bottles in 2017. This compares to Germany’s RUHR area (Essen, Dortmund and Duisburg) that drank 4m h/l, Buenos Aires 3.6m hl, Milan 3.3m hl, London 2.95 m hl and New York 2.8m hl.
Where better in the world to drink wine than in a classic Parisien wine bar?
The fact that Paris also has the densest wine distribution area in the world, with 23,750 different on and off-trade outlets, including 20,000 hotels, restaurants andwine bars, 1,100 wine merchants and 142 Michelin stars then you could not find a more appropriate host for this new Wine Paris event.
Two becomes one
It is all the idea of Comexposium, a leading world exhibition organiser, and its Adhesion Group, which owns Vinisud and VinoVision. It saw the opportunity to maximise the benefits and reach of both events by bringing them together to create an even more powerful, influential and important trade exhibition.
As the organisers say: “Wine Paris meets the needs of buyers worldwide for a truly comprehensive exhibition where all wine producing countries are equally welcome.”
Crucially it has also been timed in order to help international buyers visit Paris at a time when wines from the 2018 European and northern hemisphere harvests are ready to be sampled, and fits neatly into their buying calendar.
As a result Wine Paris is expecting 25,000 visitors, 35% of them from outside France. Buyers can take advantage of a Hosted Buyer Programme that can help them put together a meetings schedule with producers and wineries that best meet their needs.
International show
Dedicated tasting areas made it easier for buyer to really get to know a specific region at last year’s VinoVision show
The event might be focused on Paris, but this is very much both a French and international wine show. It includes producers from every French region, but also a number of other countries will be represented, with the “ultimate goal” of having every wine country in the world there. The 2019 event will also have wines to taste from Austria, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland. It will also feature specialised tasting on key regions, including on February 12 the chance to taste the latest Bordeaux vintage with the Grand Cercle des Vins de Bordeaux.
In all there will be 2,000 exhibitors showing their wines which is far more than at the respective Vinisud (1,420 exhibitors) and VinoVision (350 exhibitors) shows in 2018. Vinisud is the more established of the two events having first started out in 1994, culminating in its 14th show in 2018. VinoVision, by comparison, is still making its name having held its first show in 2017.
But by bringing them together it gives buyers the chance to taste wines they would not normally be able to do by visiting each show separately. Saving time, money and resources.
Prior to Wine Paris is a separate event, World Wine Meetings Global Paris, also organised by Comexposium which takes place between February 7-10. Here wine producers from around the world will get the chance to have more time for detailed and focused meetings with buyers ahead of the main trade exhibition. Each buyer on average is able to organise 20 meetings, lasting 40 minutes each, with producers that match their buying needs. This is the 41st edition of this event and is primarily focused on bringing producers from key markets such as Europe, the US and South America, together with key buyers from around the world.
The Wine Paris event will also include a series of masterclasses hosted by the Institute of Masters of Wine. These include:
* Rebecca Gibb MW : “Is France still number one in the world of Sauvignon Blanc?”
* Jean K Reilly MW: “Malbec, the rediscovery of a popular grape variety!”
* Elizabeth Gabay MW: “Does rosé still have the ability to surprise?”
- Wine Paris 2019 takes place at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles between February 11-13. For full details click here.
- You can find our more about WWM Global Paris here.
