It is hard not to feel sympathy for the organisers of the 2024 ProWein fair. Facing increasingly vigorous competition from Vinexposium’s Wine Paris-Vinexpo show, just a few weeks ago, they have also, for the second year in succession, had to deal with domestic strikes that made it harder for would-be visitors to make their way to Düsseldorf. ProWein found itself having to charter shuttle buses from Frankfurt airport at very short notice.
The protesting Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn railway workers may not have been thinking about the impact their efforts would have on the world’s largest wine trade fair, but they certainly contributed to the fact that only 47,000 people attended the event rather than the expected 50,000. This figure was 2,000 smaller than in 2023.
Those who did make it to the fair found an event that looked just like the ones they remembered from previous years, though with the broader aisles that were introduced when Covid was still an issue.
Varied responses
Closer inspection, however, revealed some big differences between the halls. As Australian consultant, and ProWein veteran Brett Crittenden noted, the mood in the German and spirits hall was great, but the French hall was somewhat ‘empty’, despite the presence of the Champagne lounge. The Italian hall, on the other hand, was lively.
Spanish and Portuguese exhibitors appeared to do better than the Italians though, as one visitor mischievously said, this might have reflected greater effort on their part. The Spanish hall, certainly, was brighter and jazzier and, unlike a surprising number of Italians, Spanish exhibitors did not pack up their stands at lunchtime on the last day.
Perhaps the most successful halls — apart from those representing the domestic industry — were 13 and 14 where the New World and Eastern Europe were located. California had a big presence in Hall 14 and Joan Kautz of Kautz Ironstone, another long-time ProWein exhibitor, spoke for others when she said she was very happy with the meetings she had. Many exhibitors had visited both Wine Paris and ProWein this year - two trade fair visits one right after the other were hardly feasible in the long term, some of them had not yet decided where to focus on in the future.
Nearby, on the sizeable Wine of South Africa section, WoSA CEO Siobhan Thompson agreed that many of her country’s participants had done well at the fair.
In Hall 13, Moldova’s booth attracted attention with its Wine-Produced-by-Artificial-Intelligence, and the Georgia, Slovenia and Hungary areas were all busy.
Smaller numbers; higher quality
Throughout the fair, the story was the same. Numbers of visitors were smaller, but the quality of those who did attend was high. And, as one exhibitor said, “there were fewer groups of young men and women with no likelihood of buying.”
Exhibitors did lament that there were fewer Americans, Asians and Africans than they had hoped to see, which may reflect, unfortunately, the general downturn in wine.
Part of the value of ProWein is being able to see the entire world at once, which makes trend-spotting extremely easy to do. It was notable that not only were the exhibitors in the non-alcohol section extremely pleased with the turnout, but that their footprint had doubled since last year — this, surely, is a sign of things to come.
