- After selling out in record time, BWW 2024 will bring together more than 850 leading wineries with key buyers and importers
- Some one hundred experts, top sommeliers and well-known winemakers will present recent developments in the world of fine wine
Barcelona Wine Week is now established as the most unmissable event for Spain’s best wineries and 2024’s fourth BWW is set to beat all records from 5 to 7 February 2024 at Fira de Barcelona’s Montjuic venue. More than 850 wineries from seventy protected designations of origin will exhibit their best wines in an exclusive trade fair that will display the quality of the best wines now being made in Spain to importers from all around the world. There will also be a programme of presentations and tastings by some one hundred acknowledged experts who will discuss the challenges facing the sector and reveal the wines we can expect to be enjoying.
The leading trade show for the highest quality Spanish wine, Barcelona Wine Week (BWW), will be busier than ever next February with more than 850 wineries showing the very best products in the market in Spain and networking with the more than 20,000 people from the industry who will attend – all of which confirms BWW as unique in Spain in terms of promoting and internationalising the sector.
Those visitors will include 650 major buyers and importers from strategic markets such as the United States, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands, China and the United Kingdom invited by BWW in partnership with ICEX (Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade). They will be joined by 1,000 Spanish buyers invited as part of BWW’s VIP Buyers programme. In total, it is estimated that during the event there will be more than 11,400 business meetings between buyers and exhibitors.
For President of Barcelona Wine Week and of the Cava Protected Designation of Origin, Jaiver Pagés, “BWW has become the event that everyone working in the wine industry wants to be at thanks to its exclusivity, the attendance of leading buyers who represent significant business opportunities, and its inspiring programme of tastings and presentations.” He added: “interest from the sector in attending has been enormous and we put up the ‘Sold Out’ signs in record time. Although the event continues to grow, we are not focused on the number of exhibitors but on delivering a premium trade show that brings together exhibitors and visitors of quality and excellence.”
BWW 2024’s exhibitors will include leading brands such as Araex, Protos, Matarromera, Pago de los Capellanes, Juvé & Camps, Iguazú, La Rioja Alta, Freixenet and Vallformosa. There will also be hundreds and small and medium-size wineries under the banners of more than seventy Denominations of Origin from the whole of Spain. The most heavily represented will be DO Cava, DO Penedès, DOCa Rioja and DO Ribera del Duero, but other Denominations will also be represented, including Rueda, Priorat, Bierzo, Madrid, Valencia, Jumilla, Costers del Segre and Navarra. In terms of Spain’s Autonomous Communities, the most heavily represented will be Catalonia, Castilla y Leon, Valencia, Euskadi (Basque Country), Galicia and Rioja.
The trade show, which has grown 12% to cover nearly two acres, will be made up of three large areas. The largest will be BWW Lands (65% of the space), with wineries organised by Denomination of Origin and other quality marks. Next, BWW Brands and BWW Complements&Tech (28% of the space) with some of the market’s best known brands. And finally, BWW Collectives and BWW Impulse with small business and microwineries from all over Spain.
A great tasting with the latest in wine
BWW 2024’s busy programme of activities will once again feature some one hundred experts, Masters of Wine, sommeliers, critics and leading winemakers who will discuss the major challenges and microtrends for and in the industry and offer unique, unrepeatable tastings. In 2024, the central theme will be ‘Recipients for making and ageing wine: reuse and innovation’ and the programme will explore in depth the trend towards the use of unusual, innovative and recovered recipients that allow the wine to express itself with great freedom and purity. From jars and amphorae to ceramic, concrete and granite eggs, barrels and casks in unusual woods, stone presses and ancient dry stone vats.
Notable sessions addressing that theme include the tasting ‘Alternative methods of ageing, winemaking beyond wood’ with winemakers such as Fernando Mora (Master of Wine and founder of Bodegas Frontonio, Aragon), Dominik Huber (Terroir al Límit, DOCa Priorat), Sara Pérez (Venus, DOCa Priorat) and Javier Revert (Javi Revert Viticultor). And the roundtable featuring (Master of Wine and winemaker) Almudena Alberca, Pilar Cavero (sommelier and wine critic at ABC) and Carlota Pena (winemaker and expert in organic winemaking).
BWW 2024 will also bring together the winners of Best Sommelier of Spain 2019, 2021 and 2022: Diego González, Gabriel Lucas and Álex Pardo, to talk about microtrends in winemaking. And winemakers Raül Bobet, Alfredo Maestro and Miquel Palau will explain how they make wine using presses from the twelfth and nineteenth centuries.
The diversity of materials and recipients and how they affect the wine will be explained in the Wine Tasting Journey space, which will offer a self-guided tasting of seventy wines aged in unusual recipients.
Other notable presenters will include Peter Richards, Master of Wine and one of the best known wine communicators in the United Kingdom; Beth Willard from Decanter magazine, Ferran Centelles (El Bulli Foundation) and François Chartier, selected as the best sommelier in the world and acknowledged as being at the forefront of the creation of harmony between food and wine.
Reprising his accustomed, exclusive tasting, sommelier and La Vanguardia journalist Ramon Francàs will offer a session entitled ‘The ten magnificent wines of the Ribera del Duero DO’, a journey through the best wines of houses such as Pago de los Capellanes, Vega Sicilia, Viña Sastre and Aalto.
From sustainability to Artificial Intelligence
BWWHub will host a number of presentations and roundtables on the themes of the sustainability, internationalisation and digitisation of wineries. The sessions will cover significant topics such as the role of Artificial Intelligence in the industry and exporting to the United States with ICEX (Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade).
In relation to sustainability, ways to reduce carbon footprints will be discussed and wineries such as Masaveu, Arizcuren and Mar de Frades will describe the measures they have taken to adapt to climate change. Other sessions will look at the new laws around the labelling of wine and trends in drinking alcohol-free wine at a roundtable featuring wineries Matarromera, Familia Torres and Juan Gil.
Barcelona Wine Week will reach out to the whole city. During the event, as part of the Barcelona Likes the City programme and the Hotel Wine Tour, different DOs will pair up with five-star hotels to offer tastings, paired tastings of food and wine, and other events to present their wines.
BWW also works with the Spanish Wine Federation (FEV); the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA); the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism; ICEX Spain Export and Investment and the Department of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Barcelona Wine Week 2024 is supported by Cajamar, Spain’s leading cooperative banking group.
Madrid, 21 November 2023