EXHIBITIONS/DATES & DETAILS: Fair fever

Those of you who are itching to play with your palm-pilots will be glad to know that next year is full of unmissable drinks exhibitions and fairs. From the first on-trade wine show to the mighty Vinexpo in Bordeaux

Wine+
Location: National Hall,
Olympia, London
Dates: 17 – 18 January
www.wineplus.co.uk
Wine+, the first ever dedicated on-trade wine show, kickstarts the year in London. For two days, 80 wholesalers, producers, winemakers, distributors, brand owners and boutique importers will showcase their portfolios to on-trade buyers. Billed as “the most exciting new wine initiative of the millennium”, Wine+ will bring together key buyers and decision makers from the on-trade at a crucial time of the year for forming wine lists. Visitors will include sommeliers, F&B directors, caterers and management from the hotel, restaurant, bar, pub, club and contract catering sectors. In addition to these exhibitors, Wine+ will also offer a Live Theatre with a series of interactive sessions including a sommelier master class presented by Gerard Basset and Henri Chapon. The show will also include a Business Clinic featuring seminars where visitors can ask experts for advice on specific issues as well as a themed Taste Zone.   

Vive la France
Location: London Olympia
Dates: 19 – 21 January
www.vivelafrance.co.uk
With around 40,000 dedicated Francophiles expected to attend, Vive la France, a celebration of French lifestyle and culture, promises to be bigger and better this year. Enjoy a glass of wine while playing petanque or visit one of the four separate shows that make up Vive la France. Visitors can choose from the French Food and Wine Show, the French Travel and Tourism Show and the French Lifestyle and Culture Show as well as the French Property Show. The highlight of the exhibition, however, is the food. Local specialities, including cheeses, bread, chocolate, patisseries and charcuterie are on offer, as well as some of the best regional French wines.

Salon des vins de loire
Location: Parc des Expositions d’Angers, France
Dates: 5 – 7 February
www.salondesvinsdeloire.com
Federico Castellucci, director of the OIV (the International Vine and Wine Organization) will open the 21st Loire Wine Fair on February 5. This year’s fair will focus on the challenges faced by Val de Loire wine on the international market. New features include a competition for the best wine blogs. A jury made up of wine and web professionals will reward the best wine blogs in three categories: the best French blog, the best international blog and the best blog written by a Val de Loire winegrower.In the past four years, the number of visitors to this fair has increased by over 20%. This year, the fair’s organizers expect 9,000 visitors to come from all over the world to visit the 600 exhibitors, most of whom are viticulturists, cooperative wine cellars and merchants.Just in case you need more excuses to visit the salon, as well as being the third largest wine region in France with 68 AOC wines, the Loire Valley is listed as a World Heritage site.

IFE 07 International
Food & Drink Exhibition
Location: Excel, London
Dates: 18 – 21 March
www.ife.co.uk
Visitors to the International Food & Drink Exhibition will have the opportunity to discover the latest products, companies, trends, ideas and innovations in food and drink.  The UK’s largest food and drink trade show will feature 1,350 suppliers including retailers, food service operators, wholesalers, distributors, importers, exporters and manufacturers. If you work in retail, catering, wholesale or manufacturing and are responsible for purchasing food and drink, IFE should be a date in your diary.

Prowein 2007
Location: Düsseldorf, Exhibition Centre
Dates: 18 – 20 March
www.prowein.de
ProWein attracted over 30,000 trade visitors in 2006 and this year promises to be just as busy. Around 3,000 exhibitors are expected to attend with 75% coming from outside Germany. Last year, the central tasting zone featured some 1,000 products of international origin with the spotlight on Riesling and red wine blends. The spirits range at ProWein also proved popular with 313 exhibitors presenting high-proof drinks. The liqueur-themed tasting zone was also a hit. For those visitors keen to see the sights of Düsseldorf, ProWein admission tickets include free round-trip transportation to the trade fair on the Regional Transport Network Rhine-Ruhr (VRR).

Vinitaly
Location: Verona Exhibition Centre
Dates: 29 March – 2 April
www.vinitaly.com
Vinitaly has been made even bigger this year in order to make room for the 140,000 expected visitors and 4,200 exhibitors. The exhibition has been extended to the Palazzo della Gran Guardia (Piazza Brà, close to the Town Hall), which will be home to “Vinitaly for You”, the evening wine store with food and live music for fine wine enthusiasts.
This year, Vinitaly’s organisers have put together a programme of traditional and innovative events. The line-up includes: “Tasting Ex…Press” – international wines presented by leading wine-sector magazines; “Taste & Dream” – great historical Italian wines, and “Trendy Today, Big Tomorrow” – companies investing in the future. There will also be a food and wine pairing event featuring young European chefs combining traditional continental cuisine with Italian wines. Meanwhile, “Gulliver’s Travels” will enable visitors to discover quality niche wines from European countries. The exhibition will also feature a “Young Lions” section, naming the top 10 European producers for the next four decades of world oenology.

TFWA Asia Pacific

Location: The Suntec, Singapore
Dates: 15 – 18 May
The Tax Free World Association Asia Pacific exhibition attracts buyers from travel retail and duty-free retail operators, airport authorities, agents and distributors who want to do business with international suppliers of products destined for luxury and travel-retail outlets. The event is likely to prove more popular this year as the tax-free sector grows. Tourist arrivals in East Asia and the Pacific are predicted to reach 397 million by 2020, compared with 81m in 1995, resulting in an average annual growth rate of 6.5%.Each year the exhibition offers visitors a mix of brands from the wine and spirits, tobacco, fragrance and cosmetics, fashion and accessories, jewellery, gifts, electronics, home decoration, confectionery and fine food sectors. Last year, the 219 stands attracted just under 2,000 visitors.This year’s exhibition will see the return of The Design Studio, which proved a hit among visitors last year. Designers will unveil a wide range of products that are likely to appeal to travel-retail and duty-free professionals. Participants can also look forward to joining in the golf tournament, the Opening Cocktail and Singapore Swing Party, as well as the Beach Party.

LIWSF
Location: ExCeL, London
Dates: 22 – 24 May
www.londonwinefair.co.uk

With over 18,000 visitors, including trade buyers, importers, independent retailers, wholesalers, off-licence staff, hotel, restaurant and catering staff as well as members of the press and agents, the London International Wine and Spirits Fair remains a key event for the drinks industry. This year’s show will feature 1,250 individual stands, with 50% representing the New World and 50% representing the Old World. For the second year running, the LIWSF will double the space dedicated to the Spirits Quarter, reflecting the fact that 42% of its visitors are responsible for spirits buying. The quarter will also be moved to a more prominent position at the east end of the hall and will undergo a complete redesign with stands positioned around a central hub.In a further move to strengthen its focus on the spirits category, the LIWSF has appointed Marc Charles as spirits ambassador for the show. Charles is currently managing director of the consultancy Drinks Brands International and has held a number of high-profile positions in the trade including six years as sales and trade marketing director for Pernod Ricard UK.Andrew Firth, managing director of regional wholesaler Playford Ros has been appointed a member of the LIWSF advisory board. Also joining is Ann Burgaz-Schmidt, purchasing manager at Systembolaget in Sweden, one of the largest buying organisations in the world. The board advises on the development of the fair from both a domestic and international perspective.

Bar.07
Location: Earls Court 2, London
Dates: 5 – 6 June
www.barshow.co.uk
This year’s BAR show features a number of new initiatives. In order to facilitate meetings between visitors and exhibitors, the organisers of Bar.07 have introduced a Hosted Buyers event on each day of the show to bring together suppliers and buyers of the industry. Participants can pre-arrange meetings with the visitors of their choice to guarantee that they get to speak to the right people. This year’s event will also include an International Wine Forum where wine experts will try to raise the profile of wine within the bar industry. In addition, the Bartenders’ Theatre will feature the final round of the National Bartenders’ Competition. Regional heats in the run-up to the show will identify the cream of the industry, who will battle it out at BAR.07 for the coveted title of Best Bartender 2007.BAR.07 is also introducing the Business Bar, an enclosed area showcasing the latest in interior design with cutting-edge technology and services. Over 9,500 visitors, including bar managers, owners and operators as well as architects and designers attended the show last year.

Vinexpo Bordeaux

Location: Parc des expositions de Bordeaux Lac
Dates: 17 – 21 June
www.vinexpo.fr
This year’s Vinexpo will focus on the techniques and tools needed to drive wine and spirits sales as well as attracting some 50,000 visitors from the trade. The organisers of the biennial fair have created a new section for wine and spirit marketers that will focus on presenting systems and retail solutions for generating sales to consumers via supermarkets, wine retailers and restaurateurs. Exhibitors will be showing a range of retail techniques from point-of-sale, merchandising, communication and training to sales accessories, furnishings and fittings. Vinexpo will not be featuring its traditional, invitation-only outdoor pavilions known as the Club des Marques for the 2007 show in Bordeaux. In their place, but not on the same site, will be the Club du Lac – a set of larger, closed and air-conditioned structures overlooking the lake outside the exhibition’s main space, Hall 1  These temporary buildings will comprise two floors, an outdoor terrace and private landscaped gardens. Those restaurants which did occupy the space alongside the lake will move to the site formerly held by the Club des Marques. Visitors can stay at the newly refurbished Radisson SAS Grand Hotel, which reopens next spring. Set in the heart of Bordeaux, the hotel has 150 rooms including 17 suites decorated by Jacques Garcia and is situated in the heart of the Golden Triangle, opposite the Grand Théâtre. Tired fair-goers can also refresh themselves in the spa and refuel in the hotel’s luxury restaurant.

TFWA World Exhibition

Location: Palais des Festivals et des Congrès de Cannes
Dates: 22 – 26 October
The TFWA World Exhibition organisers expect to be able to cap last year’s success when 13,000 participants flocked to Cannes for the event. The exhibition attracted 5,370 visitors, 1,158 of whom were key buyers, representing a total visitor increase of 2% on 2005. The exhibition villages included 446 exhibiting companies, launching around 1,000 new products and arond 3,000 brands were featured throughout the exhibition.

The Wine Show
Location: Business Design Centre, Islington, London
Dates: 25 – 28 October
www.wineshow.co.uk
Last year’s Wine Show reflected consumers’ increasing interest in wine with visitor numbers up by 18% on 2005. There was also more interest from the trade, with the number of exhibitors up by 35%, providing visitors with 136 stands offering 1,500 wines. The show’s organisers are keen to increase the number of interactive attractions. Sainsbury’s food and wine matching stand proved a hit last year as did Thresher’s 10-Minute Wine Tasting School and the French Wines Experience.

BBC Good Food Show Scotland 2007
Location: Scottish Exhibition Centre, Glasgow
Dates: 2 – 4 November
www.glasgow.bbcgoodfoodshow.com
The BBC Good Food Show is heading North of the border and will take place in Scotland for the first time.  Building on the established success of the BBC Good Food Show London and the renowned BBC Good Food Show, the show will take place at the SECC in Glasgow. The show will include local produce and a huge selection of beers, wines, spirits and liquors from the UK’s finest food and drink producers. As if that wasn’t appetising enough, the show will also feature cookery demonstrations by celebrity chefs in the Winter Kitchen.

© db January 2007