The End of Wine Fairs

At this point, it’s not hard to spot the gaping hole the pandemic left in the food and beverage industry. No more lingering in dimly lit restaurants until closing or chatting carelessly with the stranger on the barstool next to yours. Michelin star restaurants have resorted to takeout and bars are peddling bottles on freshly whipped up websites. 

I miss what once was and the familiarity that came along with it. But there’s one thing I won’t miss.

Imagine you’re shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other people. As each hour passes, the voices, once a calm collective of discussions, are now spurts of uproarious laughter. Strangers exchange contact info and shake hands across the table, which feels sacrilegious knowing what we know now. Shared spittoons slowly fill to the brim, a prime bacterial breeding ground if ever there was one.

The wine fair has been instrumental in getting delicious wines to your favorite wine shops, restaurants, and e-commerce sites and their importance isn’t up for debate.

However if you ask anyone in the industry, they’d be hard-pressed to define them as enjoyable. That’s because wine fairs aren’t...fun. Are they an efficient way to taste an array of wines? Of course. Are they a centralized place to bump into industry acquaintances and make new connections? Undoubtedly! But what they aren’t is… fun.

I’ve been to wine fairs in Germany, NYC, the UK, and except for the language they’re all the same. It’s hard enough parsing out the producers worth tasting, but as a Black woman I usually stick out like a sore thumb. That experience in itself can be a bit isolating, but throw in unpredictable raucous behavior as the day wears on and wine fairs quickly lose any appeal they might have had.

As someone in the midst of a formal wine education, ideally my journey deeper into the world of wine would have been dotted with wine fairs, vineyard visits and the like. I was bummed that I wouldn’t get to network like I’d originally hoped but there was also, dare I say, a glimmer of happiness that I wouldn’t have to shout over others to introduce myself and push past attendees who’d had a bit too much to drink. 

2020 proved itself to be brutal, with hospitality and tourism industries around the world taking blow after blow as the months wore on. Globally, restaurant seating is down by as much as 50% over last year, and a once unshakeable industry came tumbling down right before our eyes.

When Prowein, the world’s largest wine fair based in Dusseldorf, Germany, was canceled for both 2020 and 2021, it was clear that the wine industry had been seriously upended right along with restaurants.

Trade fairs are costly for producers so a smaller producer who’s hoping to get their wines on the map often can’t shell out thousands for an exhibitor booth and transportation for the sheer hope they’ll make a valuable connection or sale. But if they do have the opportunity to attend, they could make a deal that could help keep their business afloat.

Can we find alternative ways to network and taste wines from around the globe without relying on wine fairs? Influencers and brands have held virtual individual tastings, shipping bottles of wine to consumers for a guided tasting via a webinar, but what about professionals?

Hopwine has emerged as a leader in the virtual tasting scene with a model that invites the trade to taste producer samples that have been bottled into 2cl vessels and ships to attendees upon request at the end of the fair. So as a buyer, you’d log in, chat with different producers on different virtual rooms and if you like what you hear, you’d then request the samples. 

It currently seems impossible (and impractical) to send every single sample to every single attendee so an option like Hopwine could show itself as a more efficient way for producers to target attendees who are really serious about making a buying decision. It would also cut back on wasted wine, paper and other resources that could ultimately be funneled back to the winemaker.

Other in-person options include limiting the total attendee count, issuing designated and staggered entrance times and spreading the event out over more days to decrease the number of people in contact with one another. Wine fairs could distribute a personal, eco-friendly spittoon like EzySpit - that traps saliva microbes and are biodegradable to boot.

Once the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2021 many of us were filled with the hope that we’d somehow return to the world we knew before COVID. The reality is that many businesses are still scrambling and millions of people around the world are still out of work as a direct result of the pandemic. We’re faced with more than 2 million deaths worldwide and right now, we all need a mood booster and wine fairs could be just the ‘pro’ we need if executed responsibly.

Trade shows also provide a welcome economic boost via tourism dollars and the hiring of trade show staff, so if there’s another reason to root for them, it’s certainly that.

Wine fairs may not make a return for quite a while, but when they do, the normalcy of attending a crowded wine fair will have regained some novelty… enough that it could boost attendance counts for next round of major fairs. 

But with the accessibility, cost and sheer ease of virtual options, it’s likely that traditional shows will have a very real threat, that isn’t at all related to the pandemic.