New approach at vintage fair

Licensees may have been slow to wake up to the profit potential of wine, but they're catching on fast with help from the likes of the London International Wine & Spirit Fair. NIGEL HUDDLESTON reports

It's a quarter of a century since 61 exhibitors descended on a room above Derry & Toms department store in Kensington for the London Wine Trade Fair.

Although the first visitor lists have long since disappeared, it's unlikely that pub licensees would have featured very highly on them. The UK wine market was still relatively undeveloped and the pub market for wine even more so. But in the last few years, pubs have been catching up in wine, and the exhibition ­ now known as the London International Wine & Spirit Fair ­ has been catching up too.

AC Nielsen figures show that per capita wine consumption has leapt from 0.72 litres in 1981 when the first fair was held, to 2.75 litres in 2004. The total market value has jumped from £3.4bn to £10.6bn, while wine's share of the alcohol market in the UK has increased from 8.1% to 24.6%.

Some 13,000 people made the trip to the ExCel centre in London's Docklands for the 2004 exhibition, 23% of them from the on-trade, and 6% of them from pubs and bars.

This has stepped up over recent years as the pub trade's awareness of wine's profit potential has grown, but it also represents a push by the fair's organiser Brintex to make it more relevant for pubs.

Fair director James Murray says: "We did a lot of work with (research company) Wine Intelligence because we wanted to understand what those who visited from the on-trade wanted, but also why those that weren't coming didn't, and what we could do to make it worthwhile for them.

"The market has increased very rapidly, but there's still more penetration to be had and wine is a huge opportunity for anyone who runs a pub, a bar or a restaurant."

The main on-trade focus over the past couple of years has been the On-Trade Forum, comprising talks and tastings with specific relevance to hospitality.

This year the format has been remodelled to make separate features of on-trade seminars and on-trade tastings.

Murray says: "We felt the word forum' blurred the boundaries a bit, so we've got these two distinct things.

"The idea of the seminars is that you can go back and tell people not only why they've got to try a particular wine, but also that you've met the winemaker and he told you this about it. It will enthuse people a lot more."

The free seminar programme begins with a Wine & Spirit Education Trust event, in conjunction with the Morning Advertiser, designed to give relative novices more confidence.

Wine is a route to profit

"There are a lot of people who come from the on-trade who do know their stuff, but there are also a lot more who come who know that wine is a route to profit, but know that they need to know more," adds Murray.

Other seminars include a look at the challenges facing the industry with Wine Intelligence, how wines from Roussillon match spicy food and a comparative tasting of wines from Australia, California and New Zealand with Beringer Blass.

The tasting area features wines from 25 companies dedicated to the on-trade. The area is unstaffed so that visitors can taste as quickly or as slowly as they like, without having to engage in polite conversation with reps or be intimidated by detailed technical jargon.

"You haven't got someone breathing down your neck putting you under pressure," says Murray. "You can take your time if you don't know too much about wines, or go more quickly to things that are interesting if you do.

"It also means you can seek out some fantastic wines that might be relevant for your business and then look in the catalogue to go and find the people to talk to about them. If you were a licensee turning up at the fair for the first time, you might wonder where to start. But with the on-trade tasting it makes it easier."