Events

Warsaw Wine Experience – a truly successful experience

Poland

Text: Natalia Zakharchuk

In recent years, Poland’s wine market has been growing by 10% annually, and this is undoubtedly facilitated by events such as the Warsaw Wine Experience. The international Wine Travel Awards project joined the information partners of the Polish exhibition, thanks to which the wines of the award winners were presented at the Warsaw exposition.

The Warsaw Wine Experience, which took place for the first time in 2019, was founded by a team of experienced wine professionals. In 2012, they launched the Winicjatywa website. In 2017, they created Ferment, a magazine for wine lovers. Currently, the Ferment family of products includes a magazine, a website, wine awards, a wine school, a wine tourism agency and, launched in 2019, a new wine fair in Poland for consumers – Warsaw Wine Experience. The talented and professional team of the event organizers includes Tomasz Prange-Barczynski, who is a Wine Travel Awards nominee, editor-in-chief of Ferment and a regular judge at Mundus Vini.

Warsaw Wine Experience, held in October, attracted representatives of trade, winemakers and wine lovers. The organizers reported the participation of 45 exhibitors from 12 countries.

Visitors to the event had the opportunity to try a range of imported wines not yet available in Poland, meet producers and enjoy tasting an increasingly impressive selection of local wines.The organizers also offered a series of interesting workshops, seminars and tastings with commentary by Ferment editors:

  • “Polish wines: a new discovery” – Maciej Nowicki;
  • “Best Ferment Wines” – Wojciech Bońkowski MW;
  • “German Riesling and Terroir” – Tomasz Prange-Barczynski;
  • “Barolo 2018 – the new harvest of the king of Italian wines” – Maciej Świetlik.

Fernando Mora MW and Wojciech Bonkowski MW held a seminar “Aragon – Wines from the Mountains”, where they talked about the terroir and unsurpassed wines of the Spanish winery Bodegas Frontonio.

In turn, the media partner of the exhibition, Wine Travel Awards, represented SHUMI Winery, one of the most famous Georgian wineries of the new generation, winner of the WTA 2022–2023 awards in three categories: Visiting Card of the Country, Must Visit, Progressive Approach, Art & History Object. It is worth reminding that Shumi also became the most successful Georgian winery at this year’s Mundus Vini competition (7 gold medals!). As part of the presentation, WTA held an author’s tasting of her company’s wines by Salome Lomsadze, Commercial Director of SHUMI Winery, who represents the younger generation of top managers of this unique winery complex.

The WTA team also presented the wines of SHUMI Winery and Vinos de La Luz at its stand throughout the exhibition. Vinos de La Luz has its own wineries around the world: in California, Spain (in three DOs), Argentina, Italy and Ukraine. The premiere Ukrainian product is BIG WINES BIG ART limited edition. Ivan Marchuk 2020 Odesa Black has already collected many awards from world-famous competitions: Mundus  ViniVini-2023, Berliner Wine Trophy-2023 and Cervim-Cervim-Viticoltura  EroicaEroica-2023. And here’s another fact that our team is proud of: in 2022, our sponsor, Vinos de La Luz, was the only one among the participants of the DECANTER WORLD WINE AWARDS 2022 whose wines were awarded three platinum medals.

Among those invited to participate in the exhibition, our observers also particularly noted the impressions of Shabo Family Winery from Ukraine, Lenz Moser with samples of his Austrian and Chinese wines, as well as communication with the former editor of Meininger Verlag Richard Grosche, who now heads the Geheimrat J. Wegeler winery in Estrich-Winkel (Germany).

Richard Grosche, who is sincerely passionate about the Polish market, said: “Warsaw Wine Experience is a great showcase of what is available from the best importers and distributors. The organizers manage to hold exemplary master classes and generate a lot of interest in the world of fine wine, and they are very selective about what they present at this event.”

According to some economists, by 2035, average incomes in Poland could exceed those in the UK. Regardless of whether this happens over the next 12 years, there is no doubt that wine producers who once considered the UK, home of WSET and Masters of Wine, their main export destination are now paying much more attention to the rapidly developing Polish market. The Warsaw Wine Experience will become an increasingly important date in the international calendar, competing for audience attention with those taking place in other wine-producing countries.