Articles & Interviews

Wine Paris 2025: All Roads Lead to Paris

France

Author: Olga Pinevich-Todoriuk

In its sixth year, Wine Paris demonstrated record participant and visitor numbers, along with a range of key trends, including strengthening global wine tourism through a strategic partnership with the Wine Travel Awards.

Wine Paris 2025

This year, the Wine Paris exhibition solidified its position as a leading global event in the wine and spirits industry, attracting a record 5,500+ exhibitors and 52,622 visitors, 45% of whom were international guests from 154 countries. It’s no coincidence that the first day of the forum was held under the slogan “All roads lead to Paris.” Despite global challenges, such as political instability, declining alcohol consumption, and environmental issues, the exhibition became an important source of inspiration and innovation for the future of the industry. Even the numbers speak for themselves: the exhibition area increased by 80% compared to last year (116 international pavilions), and attendance from leading buyers representing key markets grew by 35%.

Wine Paris 2025

Thus, it can be acknowledged that over the past six years, Vinexposium has risen from a respected, but national, communication platform to an international level, becoming an important economic and political meeting point with participation from global alcohol market operators, French ministers, officials, members of parliament, and over 30 official government and public delegations. Today, both market observers and competitors – leaders in exhibition centers – unanimously highlight the rapid rise in popularity of Wine Paris as a key driver for the industry, fostering collaboration, constructive discussions, and creating opportunities for business development and growth in trade relations.

Wine Paris 2025

This year’s event featured dozens of conferences with experts, including sessions from the French Federation of Wine and Spirits Exporters (FEVS), OIV, Moët Hennessy, and the Wine Origins Alliance. Additionally, the Academy held 250 presentations from international experts across 130 sessions. Vinexposium also launched the “Voice of the Industry” platform, providing valuable insights from key industry players.

The popular Be Spirits section also showed significant growth: 34 producing countries, 37% more than in 2024, and over 300 exhibitors. Rodolphe Lameyse, CEO of Vinexposium, summarized the exhibition’s results, stating: “In times of uncertainty, economic crises, and the loss of meaning, isolationism is not an option. By combining strengths and promoting innovation, involving all industry players, and linking the economic and political spheres, we successfully implemented our strategy. Over the years, Wine Paris has established itself in the global consciousness as a vital source of influence. More than ever, the 2025 exhibition played a decisive role for national and international stakeholders in the wine and spirits sector.”

Here’s a reminder of the upcoming events in 2025: Vinexpo America (May 7-8 in Miami), Vinexpo Asia (May 27-29 in Singapore), Vinexpo India (October 11-12 in Mumbai), and World Bulk Wine Exhibition (November 24-25 in Amsterdam). By bringing together exhibitors and visitors at several events throughout the year, Vinexposium acts as an ambassador for the industry, focused on expanding sales. This is why its flagship forum, Wine Paris, was nominated in the prestigious Wine Travel Awards category “Enogastronomic Events/Event of the Year,” further confirming its role as a key player in the wine and wine tourism sectors. Voting continues throughout March, and every supporter of the Paris exhibition has a chance to vote for their favorite.

Wine Paris 2025

Once again, Wine Paris demonstrated a fruitful strategic partnership and collaboration with WTA and the award’s founder, Communication Media Group Drinks+, strengthening its influence on the global wine tourism landscape. The Wine Travel Awards Guide, published annually and successfully distributed at Wine Paris 2025, became an important resource showcasing leading trends, key ideas, and significant achievements by members of the WTA community.

To gain deeper insights, we asked our strategic partners and members of the WTA community for their thoughts on the exhibition. Here’s what they had to say.

Wine Paris 2025

Robert Joseph, a seminal figure in wine journalism and a trusted member of the Wine Travel Awards jury since its inaugural year, shared his perspective:
“Wine Paris was an extremely successful event for me as an exhibitor—particularly with le Grand Noir in Hall 7.2 and K’AVSHIRI in Hall 4. We saw a range of high-quality visitors in the Wines Unearthed area of Hall 4 where we were pouring K’AVSHIRI. From conversations with other exhibitors, the only complaints came from those who hadn’t scheduled meetings before the fair. The only minor issue was the relative shortage of Asian visitors, likely due to Chinese New Year and the growing success of regional events.”

Wine Paris 2025

Vladimer Kublashvili, from Winery Khareba, reflected on his experience:
“Winery Khareba has been part of VinExpo exhibitions for many years, and this year’s Wine Paris was particularly impressive. The organization was exceptional, and the convenience for participants was outstanding. The exhibition attracted producers from diverse countries, and the event offered masterclasses, tastings, and insightful discussions. For us, it was a rewarding experience with fruitful meetings and tastings. Wine Paris continues to be an invaluable platform for showcasing our wines and connecting with professionals from across the globe.”

Wine Paris 2025

Salome Lomsadze, Commercial Project Manager and a representative of SHUMI Winery, which has been WTA Winner & Nominee and is this campaign`s nominne in the

shared:
“Wine Paris 2025 was an outstanding event showcasing the evolving global wine industry. The fair provided an excellent platform for producers to connect with international buyers, media, and influencers. We saw a surge of interest in Georgian wines, especially those from the Kakheti region. The exhibition proved highly fruitful commercially, with new partnerships and agreements that will expand our international reach. It’s been an excellent platform for highlighting Georgian wines and forging valuable connections in the global wine market.”

Dr. Ricardo F. Nunez

Dr. Ricardo F. Nunez, Head of the international group of companies Vinos de La Luz:

The arrival of COVID-19, which paralyzed the world and radically changed many of the habits humanity had been cultivating for years, turned out to be a snapshot of what was already happening in the world of international wine fairs. Prowein in Düsseldorf was the undisputed leader, London Wine was a shadow of its legendary past, VINEXPO in Bordeaux was disappearing, Vinitaly in Verona had become a championship among Italians visiting each other’s stands, Alimentaria in Barcelona shed the wine sector to return to the food-focused fair its name implied, and exhibitions had begun to emerge in Asia, which still failed to fully convince Western exhibitors, even though they were driven by major global wine media outlets. If there’s one phrase about the tragedy of that virus that seems made for wine fairs, it’s that “nothing was the same after the pandemic.” In these past three years, everyone has made some kind of move to step away from the position in which they were caught in that snapshot, each for different reasons. PROWEIN expanded its surface and internal spaces – crowds are no longer well-regarded since the pandemic – and as a result, increased stand prices, once again driving up already expensive hotel rates in a city that, additionally, is boring. But for an absolute leader with no competition in sight, price wasn’t a deciding factor: countries had no alternative but to attend a fair focused exclusively on business between supply and demand, making exhibitors and visitors feel that anyone not at Prowein simply didn’t exist. That need to be seen and to see others remains in 2025, but over the past three years, it has slowly been giving way to the result of the smartest move by a player that had lost ground due to location, event duration, and internal and external conflicts: Vinexpo. Between 2019 and 2022, the French made a series of mergers: the Vinisud show merged with Vinivision to create Wine Paris, which then merged with Vinexpo to become “Wine Paris & Vinexpo Paris” (although the name Vinexpo will soon fade to allow Wine Paris to grow). Today, Wine Paris is the main competitor to Prowein, partly replicating Prowein’s model, but adding some very interesting internal elements such as five thematic segments – Wines, Spirits, New Wineries, Organic Wines, and the Tech sector – and using as its venue hyper-connected Paris, not because the wine world needs it, but because it modernizes almost daily to serve the millions of tourists arriving from all over the world, most of whom are unaware that a wine fair is taking place there in February. Wine Paris began timidly, with imbalances between local and foreign producers, which justified the opinions of those who said one should wait and see how it evolved before deciding to exhibit. And the decision to go or not go as an exhibitor is not a minor one. Big producers of major brands can’t go with a tiny stand: the association between global brands and large stands is immediate, and everyone, at some point while walking the fair, “measures” them with their own perception of what that brand should do. But it’s also a big decision for medium or small producers, who need to take that step toward internationalizing their products. Many who attend are subsidized by organizations from their own countries, but not all cover airfare and accommodation, and this part of going or not going often ends with the decision not to attend, because even though Paris is cheaper than Düsseldorf, the cost of two people attending still represents a budget that can’t be easily reflected in the wine’s price. In 2025, Wine Paris has outdone itself in every aspect that exhibitors or visitors can perceive. It’s no longer a labyrinth to move from one pavilion to another, there were no long queues to enter, there was more staff available to assist visitors, French producers bet more strongly on their fair, they further diversified the themes of their conferences – now with better speakers – and an important detail: many countries significantly expanded their presence, as if they had decided to show their acceptance of the new format. Many of us agree that – at least this year – the traditionally self-centered French attitude of presenting France as the center of the wine world has changed. It’s almost logical that the gathering of many exhibitors and the presence of new countries in the International sector, combined with the public discourse around the uprooting of French vineyards to maintain inflated prices, and the retreat of Champagne in international markets in favor of cheaper and more popular sparkling wines, have led them to realize that the wine world today neither begins nor ends in France. Instead, it shares the spotlight with traditional players based on vineyard area or volume, and it is no longer heresy to taste a Champagne, a Cava, and an English sparkling wine (which claim to be superior) side by side. And something very important: both events now give equal importance to Spirits, which continue to grow in both space and innovation. Among these novelties is the visibility given to “mixology,” which is the foundation of the “on trade” spirits market and fills the world’s bar agendas with competitions and demonstrations. We’ll have to see now if Vinitaly picks up the challenge and opens its international pavilion with a level of space and visibility it currently lacks. They say they will. We’ll see soon in Verona. Spain has separated food in general from wine as a beverage and has regained its wine fair identity, which had been lost to Alimentaria, through the resurgence of the Barcelona Wine Week. They made the right choice. It was the first international fair of the year and filled the halls with people. But it remains a Spanish beverage fair, open to professional visitors from around the world who either come on their own or are brought in. Still, they’ve done a good job. Not many people have heard of or remember the London Wine Fair. It used to be a must-attend event for top palates, producers, and distributors. Today, it’s run by a highly professional and generous team. Through them, producers from Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, and Lebanon came to London to showcase wines that would otherwise be very difficult to discover. The London Fair’s attitude toward Ukraine deserves a separate paragraph, opening its doors to young producers grouped in young associations and freely offering space and time. Great Britain has been and is a very important consumer market for wines from several European and Latin American countries, and they have a significant number of professional opinion-formers known to all wine lovers.

Amid these struggles to be the “leading fair,” others are emerging that begin as competitions but become tastings of all participating beverages when it’s time to award prizes. They are either regional or product-specific (rosé wine, for example), or for sparkling wines or mixed categories. These are not commercial events, but the producers who enter the competitions and then share their products with visitors hope to eventually play in the league of Prowein or Wine Paris. Maybe one day they will. In the meantime, these competition-tastings offer them visibility and confidence in their product. In the second half of the year in Italy, there’s a clear example: CERVIM, an association that brings together producers of “extreme” or “heroic” wines – ither because of the challenging geography or their own personal stories. There you learn how much artisanal Pisco Peru produces or that on the Island of Fire in Cape Verde – home to an active volcano – they make volcanic red wines that are, indeed, heroic. By the time you read this, Prowein 2025 will be open or just finished. Let’s take note of what’s good and what needs improvement. Everyone has room to grow, and we should support them – because the ones who benefit are us: the wine producers and consumers, a brotherhood with a documented 7,000-year history.

Wine Paris 2025

Florence Authier Meuric, wine expert, WTA Nominee in the Ambassador of the Year category, reflected on her participation:
“Wine Paris has grown into a dynamic, international experience. This year, I organized a shared stand with diverse winemakers and estates – 12 different winemakers and châteaux – which exceeded my expectations. The diversity and international reach of the stand fostered an exceptional synergy, making the event ideal for high-quality exchanges. The stand brought together French winemakers from different regions, Spanish producers from Rioja, British exhibitors offering canned wine, an Italian estate located at the foot of Mount Etna, as well as spirits producers. This diversity created a particularly dynamic environment conducive to networking. The only downside was the location, which was somewhat difficult to access due to poor signage, causing us to miss a few scheduled meetings.”

Why is Wine Paris generating so much enthusiasm?
Several factors explain the growing success of this event. Paris, as an iconic city, naturally attracts wine professionals thanks to its outstanding selection of restaurants, hotels, and entertainment options. Additionally, the capital is extremely well-connected by transport, making it easy for buyers to attend the event and enjoy the city after the show. Wine Paris also holds the advantage of being the first major international wine fair of the year. Until this 2025 edition, I had only attended as a visitor, and I must say that the organization has improved tremendously. From an exhibitor’s perspective, many tools are available, including networking platforms, a generous quota of exhibitor badges, and visitor invitations – all valuable assets that maximize visibility and business opportunities. Finally, for French professionals, Wine Paris offers a logistical advantage, as exhibiting and organizing participation is much easier when based locally.

Florence Meuric concluded:
“A promising event with room for improvement. To sum up, Wine Paris is an unmissable event—dynamic, high-quality, and held in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It provides early insight into the year’s key trends, thanks to the diversity of attendees and industry exchanges. Of course, some aspects still need improvement, particularly the signage, which could be optimized to facilitate navigation and prevent missed appointments. However, the overall impression is highly positive. See you in 2026 for another promising edition!”

Wine Paris 2025 has undoubtedly proven its significance in the global wine tourism and wine industry sectors, providing valuable platforms for collaboration, innovation, and new business opportunities. The event continues to strengthen its role as a key meeting point for industry professionals and enthusiasts worldwide.

As the Wine Paris 2025 event continues to captivate industry professionals, we are excited to see its lasting impact on the global wine and tourism markets. Together with the Wine Travel Awards, Wine Paris continues to showcase and nurture the connections between the world’s wine producers and the international wine tourism community, paving the way for future successes.

Looking forward to more remarkable moments in Wine Paris 2026 and beyond.

See you at Prowein. My booth is 10J69.

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Photos: Social media pages and https://wineparis.com/