9 remarkable encounters from ProWein 2024

I managed to make my way to Dusseldorf for ProWein this year, where the world of wine & spirits converges to make deals and present their latest products. Going through 16 halls, you will find my best findings.

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Packaging for sustainability

Frugalpac : divides by up to 6 the carbon footprint of wine & spirits packaging. Made of 94% recycled cardboard and fully recyclable, it works best for still wines and RTDs with shelf life up to 12 months.

Les Bouchages Delage : mono material and separable bottle stoppers for better recyclability, made of biomaterials. Several bottle stoppers solutions including a Grape + biopolymer cap, heated wood cap to avoid varnish and cask using wood of older barrels. However, I couldn’t get a clear information on precise carbon footprint reduction through these products.

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Climate-change resilient winemaking

Hochschule Geisenheim University : speaking with Prof. Manfred Stoll about innovation in climate-change resilient grape varieties (fungi / pest / water-stress resistant, extractivity…) but also in vineyard management methods (ultraviolet radiations, biodynamics…) as they have several hectares testing different management systems for 18 years. Their insights were that maintaining biodiversity is more efficient than working on grape varieties only. After 10 years of comparison, management methods that protect biodiversity proved more resilient to extreme weather events than conventional methods and allows to "Make more out of a piece of land than a bottle of wine".

Enhanced client experience

By the Glass?: autonomous tasting through connected fridges that deliver tasting quantities to consumers in 3000 locations. Recently enhanced with a screen where consumers can connect to get additional information, and collect consumers data directly. Not intending to replace the wine merchant, its most successful use case is in off trade, supporting 400%+ sales growth on premium products available for tasting in Germany.

Vollherbst : premium labels and capsules, machine or hand rolled, made out of extraordinary raw material (hemp, sand, grass, granite…), they recently launched an Augmented Reality label.

ESTAL AveryDennisonNTP : gorgeous bottle shapes and materials for outstanding client experience, they’ve published their third edition of Make a Mark concept books. Incredible bottles include: disappearing labels, hemp-made bottles, hidden messages on label, NFC-enhanced labels, asymmetric bottles and more..

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AI-powered Vintage

Moldavia tried their first AI vintage experiment – and it wasn’t bad!! Two vintages were made at the same time: winemaker and winemaker + AI. They worked with local AI experts to train ChatGPT the Moldavian wine techniques (not sufficiently available on the global internet) and followed its advice to make the first AI vintage. Two insights:

1.??????? Having never “seen” or “tasted” vines and wine, the model had some misunderstanding that needed to be corrected (mistook the weight of grapes with sugar concentration-both calculated in grams – which lead to a wrong recommendation on harvesting date)

2.??????? The model chose not to blend wine varieties as one variety presented better extractivity than others, a surprising choice for traditional wine makers.

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Data & Digital enablement

Winesfere : Data insights for the wine world. Launched 2 months ago, it includes accurate, real-time through smooth UX design on millions of data points about global trade, wine production & consumption as well as trends & news. I checked the data about China, and it mostly matched with my understanding.

Bottlebooks GmbH : Shared PIM for the wine world. The most standardized database with 300,000 products used by 15,000 companies to share up to date and precise information ranging from vintage, tasting notes to carbon footprint. I felt like they missed a GenAI layer to ease translation and pre-prepare information. They also showcased E-label QR Codes for nutritional information that can be conveniently hosted on BottleBooks as the law prevents brands from tracking or incentivizing for sales.

Visiting ProWein's 30th edition was intense but insightful about some of the changes coming to market in the upcoming years for the wine & spirits world.