Wine Paris preview: Turbulence ahead for wines and spirits in 2025

By Jo Gilbert

Published: 27 November, 2024

A shifting picture of diversification amid a challenging global landscape emerged from an interesting discussion in London yesterday (26 November), where Rodolphe Lameyse, CEO of Wine Paris owner Vinexposium, and Miles Beale, chief executive of the WSTA, gathered members of the press to discuss the potential ways of returning businesses in the UK and elsewhere to much-needed growth.

Faced with a complex crisis spanning climate change, an all-time low in crop levels, declining consumption, a slow-down in exports and the threat of protectionist taxes, “isolationism is not an option”, Lameyse (pictured) said.

“It is by combining strengths that solutions are born. Industry stakeholders are therefore increasingly feeling the need to gather around a powerful hub to strengthen their ties and engage with each other.”

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Positioning Wine Paris as the focal point of this engagement, the Vinexposium team invited members of the press to help table a path forward, as uncertainties at a global level continue to have a cumulative effect.

From a UK perspective, the good news, said Beale, is that wine and spirits sales now sit at the same level as pre-Brexit levels of 1.6 billion bottles a year, half of which come from the EU. Growth however, is the key issue, and it remains elusive.

He said: “What we’ve always been concerned about at the WSTA is that the UK risks – and it definitely does still risk this – no longer being centre of the wine trading world in quite the way as before. We’re not helping ourselves… with the changes around the new excise duty regime, things are more complicated. What it does is it drives people towards a smaller, narrower range, and with a reduction in the number of wines available, the UK is becoming a less attractive market.”

“The market is very bad: the UK is bad, the USA is bad, China is bad, we see it everywhere at the moment… 2025 marketing budgets are down,” Lameyse added. “It’s not a UK-only issue.”

Turning to how businesses are mitigating, the conversation swung onto the topic of diversification, both in terms of product innovation via low & no products and portfolios as businesses look to spread the risk globally.

Treasury Wine Esates for example, has pivoted from its reliance on China by buying up properties in California and elsewhere, while LVMH has focused on cornering the luxury market via its investment in sectors beyond wine, spirits and fashion.

At the volume level, things are still tough. This is keenly demonstrated by Pernod Ricard’s recent move to divest its wine portfolio in the face of declining global consumption.

“We drink 14% less than we did 14 years ago in the UK,” Beale said, underscoring the point.

Turning to the new duty regime, which penalises higher abv wines, Beale also confronted the flaw in the government’s plan to get Britian drinking less.

He said: “I think it’s brilliant to have no & low producers at lots of industry events, because that’s where the consumer will be [encouraged to branch out] from the product they’re used to and try something new. But the bit the government is missing hugely, which is not exclusively UK a problem, is the economy. That’s the bit I’m really worried about… with the tax regime making things more difficult for businesses, we need to ask if businesses will be around in the long-term.”

On the same topic, Lameyse said he would be interested in hearing from sectors outside wine and spirits on how they with dealt the various lobbying movements such as anti-sugar and tobacco.

With wine, he said, there is a tendency in the industry to view the category as somehow separate from the alcohol discussion. “It’s not alcohol”, he quipped, “it’s tradition, it’s terroir! But of course this is an alcoholic product”. The industry needs to come to terms with that if it is to continue to remain relevant, he stressed.

For Wine Paris’ part, organisers are key to remain at the heart of these discussions, and its strategy appears to be paying off ahead of the 2025 show.

Seven new countries – Australia, Austria, Chile, South Korea, Kazakhstan, Serbia and Slovenia – will be in situ in February, along with four new international pavilions – Moldova, Peru, Italy and Belgium. Wine GB is also heading to Paris in the new year for the first time.

Wine Paris returns from 10 to 12 February 2025.

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