By Paul Wootton, reporting from Düsseldorf
The 25th ProWein international trade fair for wines and spirits has kicked off in Düsseldorf, Germany, with nearly 7000 producers and suppliers from 60 nations exhibiting across 10 giant halls.
The show, which runs 17-19 March, is expected to attract over 60,000 international trade visitors from the retail and on-premise sectors. The show’s quarter century milestone was marked by the German Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner opening the event in a special ceremony yesterday morning (Sunday).
Italian and French suppliers dominate the show, with 1700 and 1650 exhibitors respectively, making up nearly half of the number of stands at the event. But reflecting ProWein’s reputation as the most important wine fair in the world, the show shines a spotlight on emerging and lesser-known wine-producing countries. This year, there are major activations from countries such as Armenia, Georgia and Moldova.
Once again, Australia and New Zealand have a strong presence at the show. David Babich, CEO of Babich Wines, explains there are no other European shows his company will invest in to this degree – in terms of stand build and bringing staff over from New Zealand.
“The good thing about ProWein is everyone comes here who we want to see,” he says. “We have three days of solid meetings and set up a solid agenda. We’ve got to set up a year of work ahead of us and with our distributorships globally it fulfils that function.”
We’ll be reporting on the key stories and trends to emerge from ProWein 2019 in the coming days.
Below is a gallery of images from day one of the show: