London Wine Fair’s digital offering will be ‘dialled up another notch’

At this week’s launch for London Wine Fair, the team behind the event revealed some of what visitors have to look forward to at Olympia London this May.

At a packed event in Gaucho Picadilly on Tuesday evening, the fair’s organisers offered some insight into what’s in store from 15 to 17 May.

Opening a series of short speeches, event director Hannah Tovey declared: “We all know that really when we come together, that’s when the magic happens. Whether that’s finding new partners, joint ventures, clients. Whether it’s learning, levelling up professionally, or improving your business just by exposure to new product trends or ideas – it really is important to bring people together.”

After this, marketing manager Holly Boatright said: “After a difficult period for the events industry, we’re moving forward post-pandemic with confidence. This year’s London Wine Fair will be rich with inspirational content, outstanding wines from around the world, and the abundance of networking opportunities both in person and on our intuitive digital platform.”

“We are partnering with Sustainable Wine Roundtable for the first time to develop centre stage content to ensure we are the most sustainably-minded wine exhibition to date.” db reported on the partnership with Sustainable Wine Roundtable in January.

Kate Stretton, director of international sales, then revealed how there will be a sizeable contingent of producers from abroad at the forthcoming edition: “This year we will see more Italian wineries than ever before participating, with over six large sites. Likewise, reflecting how important the UK wine market is to Greece, they will have more regions and wineries exhibiting than ever before. As well as hosting five different masterclasses from the regions of Attica, Crete and central Greece, the region of Attica is also hosting a pop-up tasting on the middle day [16 May] with over 20 producers taking part…Wines of Portugal will be resplendent in the middle of the area with 80 wineries taking part.”

Beyond the Southern Europe, Stretton disclosed that, for the first time in several years, Czechia would be hosting a pavilion. Additionally, wineries from as far afield as Ukraine, India and South Africa would be present. Closer to home, there will also be a UK producers pavilion – indeed, it was pointed out that interest in the “newest of the New World wine regions” is at a high point, with UK wines the most searched for product on London Wine Fair’s interactive platform.

As for London Wine Fair’s claim to be “the most intelligent wine event in the world”, Tovey took to the microphone again: “During the pandemic London Wine Fair really led the way. We ran the biggest ever digital wine event in the world: we streamed over 30 tastings and dispatched over 25,000 samples to our audience. We also enabled over 4,000 digital video meetings with a powerful matching algorithm.”

This year, Tovey said that the fair would be “dialling it up another notch”: “We’re giving every single visitor and exhibitor access to our London Wine Fair dashboard that you go into and set yourself up. You can go through the exhibitor list, you can go through the visitor list, you can create live meetings, you can create digital media, all in one space.”