VieVinum postponed to 2022

By Lisa Riley

Published: 18 February, 2021

The organisers of Austrian wine fair VieVinum has announced that this year’s event has been postponed to 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The fair was due to take place in Vienna from 29 to 31 May this year. It has now been pencilled in to take place from 11 June to 13 June 2022.

"We are very sorry to inform you today that, due to the current development of the pandemic, the VieVinum wine fair in Vienna cannot be held as planned and must be postponed to 2022,” said M.A.C Hoffmann & Co, who organises the event together with the Austrian Wine Marketing Board (AWMB).

“Together with the AWMB, we have weighed all options very carefully and have made this decision in the interest of protecting the health of all exhibitors and visitors.

“We believed in the implementation until the end, and worked with unceasing intensity and effort on several variants in order to set a market impulse for the Austrian wine industry within the framework of the necessary safety requirements,” said the company.

Unfortunately, it added, the “given circumstances in connection with the continuing vigorous entry regulations and the associated planning uncertainty” did not allow for any immediate implementation.

“Nevertheless, we are continuing to work on concepts to make possible again wine events that are both safe and economically feasible once the pandemic situation has eased. We know from so many vintners and market participants in the wine business that they were very much hoping for VieVinum to take place – and this makes the decision all the more difficult for us."

In October last year, figures from Statistik Austria revealed the value of Austrian wine sales in the UK plummeted in the first six months of 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.

Sales for the six months to end of June fell 26.9% by value, while volumes performed more robustly, falling back just 3%.

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