Fighting fit: what London Wine Fair has in store for 2025

Nothing is fazing London Wine Fair director Hannah Tovey this year, with the show seeing 15% year-on-year growth in 2025 even against a backdrop of tough trading conditions.

“THE WORLD of wine is an exciting and delicious world to be in, and London Wine Fair should be here to help showcase, celebrate and support that,” says Hannah Tovey, the international trade fair’s director.

Tovey, who has been at the exhibition’s helm for almost eight years now, has spent that time developing a clear and concise mission statement: “We have to remember that London Wine Fair is here to serve the industry.”

And serve the industry it does. Tovey and her team are in the final stages of preparation for this year’s event, taking place across three days at Olympia London on 19–21 May.

Preparations for the fair are happening against a backdrop of uncertainty for many, with changes to global trade tariffs being updated almost daily. Having a place to meet, gather and do business becomes all the more important in this context. “If the trading conditions are difficult, or if there are endless increases in tariffs and duty and so on, then this is something we must look at,” Tovey says. She believes the fair’s role is to “futureproof the industry that we love”. After all, “if we don’t, then we don’t have a fair anyway”.

Tovey adds: “We really have to feel like we’re working together to futureproof, both in terms of being mindful of the economic climate, but also with sustainability issues.” The topics of this year’s sessions will shine a spotlight on the global economy, tariffs, duty and sustainability, beginning with the Wine and Spirit Trade Association’s annual State of the Nation address taking place on 19 May at 10:15am.

Tovey is conscious that some industry figures “who we’d hoped to be exhibitors” are struggling with trading conditions “and may not be joining us this year”. However, the overall picture for the fair is significantly brighter. “This year’s London Wine Fair doesn’t seem to be quite the barometer of doom and gloom that one might have expected when we didn’t get the duty result we wanted, and then President Trump made all our lives a little bit more difficult,” Tovey points out.

Indeed, the 2025 fair has grown 15% year-on-year. “To be completely transparent, we are having quite a bumper year,” Tovey says. “We have lists and lists of exhibitors who’ve gone from a smaller stand to a bigger stand this year; we’ve got great lists of completely new exhibitors and pavilions from new regions; we’ve also got new business coming in the form of pop-ups.” London Wine Fair’s growth is a reflection of the hard work of its organisers. Not only will the three-day event play host to new exhibitors and producers, but it also features a long list of fresh sessions and features.

SIGNATURE SERVE

Spirits are taking centre-stage at this year’s event, in the form of a dedicated area called Signature Serve. To date, 28 exhibitors, the likes of Brewdog Distilling Co., Brixton Spirits, Mahiki Drinks, Poetica Distillery and Renais Gin included, are coming together to form Signature Serve, which will act as a co-located event alongside the larger wine fair.

The zone centres around the Signature Serve Lounge and Theatre. The lounge will feature rotating content and book signings from leading drinks authors designed to “keep the area very buoyant”, Tovey says, “but also to give all of our exhibitors a nice area in which to hold their meetings”. In addition, there will be a Signature Serve Theatre with four panel and tasting sessions each day, featuring speakers including Dawn Davies MW, head buyer at Speciality Drinks, Hawksmoor beverage director Liam Davey and spirits and hospitality writer Millie Milliken.

Spirits will represent around 10% of the event in 2025, where in previous years it was “very much less than 5%”.

Tovey and her team are responding to demand from existing visitors. An analysis of responses from last year’s London Wine Fair showed that 2,000 of its visitors had spirits buying power, meaning “that they would be better served by an event if there was an opportunity for them to also purchase and learn about spirits and non-wine products”, Tovey says. She adds:“It was very much horse before the cart in the sense that we’re making sure that our existing visitorship was relevant to a spirits exhibitor, and then building on that as our basis.”

Spirits exhibitors, Tovey hopes, will bring “a little bit of noise and energy” to the already bustling fair.

FRESH WINE FEATURES

Spirits may be taking more floor space at this year’s fair, but wine is by no means being sidelined. Tovey is keen to highlight the exhibition’s new wine features too. In terms of exhibitors, she notes that “we have definitely gained a strong reputation for London Wine Fair being a great space to discover emerging territories”.

And this is an aspect that London Wine Fair is more than happy to lean into. Following the success of last year’s Judgement of London – a tasting which paid homage to Steven Spurrier’s landmark 1976 Judgement of Paris – London Wine Fair has announced this year’s Icon Tasting theme: Battle of the Bubbles. Tovey has put the focus this year on global sparkling wines, asking some of the finest palates in the world to judge them against the benchmark – Champagne. Battle of the Bubbles will be a doubleblind tasting which will see the best Champagnes tasted against exceptional sparkling wines from around the world. The wines will be selected by Sarah Abbott MW, wine marketing consultant and cofounder of The Old Vine Conference; and Ronan Sayburn MS, CEO of The Court of Master Sommeliers.

“There will certainly be a degree of friendly competition to see how Champagne can take on the rest of the world,” Tovey says – but the idea is to celebrate quality from a range of terroirs, rather than to pit them against each other. “The aim is multifold,” she explains. “It’s to show the continued excellence and elegance of Champagne – because there’s no doubt that they know what they’re doing – but also to demonstrate that there are ever-growing territories and regions that are producing sparkling in their own methods and styles to a similar incredible quality.”

This, in the end, is Tovey’s aim: to serve an ever-evolving industry, from the icons to the up-and-comers. And, with year-onyear growth of 15%, even against a backdrop of uncertainty and challenging trading conditions, Tovey and her team are getting set to do just that.