Barcelona Wine Week allows us to take the pulse of the Spanish market and decipher its main orientations in the light of two new studies: on domestic consumption and on the necessary changes in the sector. More than 25,000 trade visitors are expected next week in Barcelona - photo credit: Barcelona Wine Week L Barcelona Wine Week is back in the Catalan capital from 2 to 4 February. For this new edition, the fair will bring together more than 1,300 companies from all over Spain, an increase of 4% compared to 2025. Hosted at the Fira de Montjuïc, the event...

Imposing windows occupy the bulk of the façade and allow you to look into the production line as well as the offices. From the outside, the new "Albert Bichot Technical Centre", south of Beaune, looks more like the headquarters of a start-up than a wine storage and packaging site. In these 17,000 m², in service since September 2025, the wines of this house, which is both a merchant and owner, are aged, packaged, stored and then shipped, and which sells 5 to 6 million bottles per year. "Our activity has almost doubled in 30 years, which meant that the production...

According to the German Wine Institute (DWI), based on the new wine consumption balance sheet, average per capita consumption among those aged 16 and over fell from 22.2 to 21.5 liters in the 12-month period from August 1, 2024, to July 31, 2025. This means German consumers drank around one bottle of wine less on average than in the previous year. Total consumption of wine and sparkling wine amounted to 17.8m hl, 4% below the previous year's level. Of this, 15.3m hl were still wine (–4.1%) and 2.5m hl were sparkling wine (–3.6%). The consumption balance sheet accounts for purchases...

Valentine’s Day will see the launch the first dealcoholized wine from a Premier Grand Cru Classé. The bold and unique product, thought to be the first to be made from botrytized grapes, comes from Château Sigalas-Rabaud in Sauternes in a joint-project with Moderato, the Paris-based pioneer of dealcoholized wine. db’s Bordeaux correspondent Colin Hay reports. I was lucky enough to be amongst the first to taste this with Laure de Lambert Compeyrot, Sigalas-Rabaud’s director, and the team that produced it in the offices of Moderato last week. It is, by some distance, the most interesting and the most impressive dealcoholized...