A Report From the Areni Global Fine Wine Symposium in Finland
The Future of Fine Wine Helsinki – Areni Global brought key figures from the Nordics and Baltics together to discuss the future of fine wine. Here’s what they discussed.
Sitting in a garden in Helsinki in late summer is magical, when the groaning apple trees make it look like the garden of Eden, and the dinner is prepared by sommelier and restaurateur Samuil Angelov.
The next day, key figures from the Nordics and Baltics gathered together in Ravintola Pastis, one of Samuil’s restaurants.
The occasion was the Areni Global Future of Fine Wine Symposium and over the course of the afternoon, speakers explored everything from fine wine distribution to how to protect the legacy of fine wine in the face of climate change.
New Consumers, New Narratives
For six years now, the OIV has reported a decline in global wine consumption. What’s going on — and what can the fine wine trade do about it?
Areni CEO Pauline Vicard moderated a panel including: Taina Vilkuna MW, the Product Communications Manager from Finland’s Alko; Sören Polonius, wine director at the Adam/Albin group of restaurants; and Honore Comfort from California’s the Wine Institute.
“I’m quite confident that we won’t lose wine consumption,” said Taina. The decline, she said, was most likely to come at the commercial end.
Taina said that younger consumers are more demanding, and come into stores with more complex and informed questions. “Millennials and GenZ are the ones that are really alert and environmentally friendly,” she went on.
“We’re having a very, very conscious generation coming up here. They know exactly what they’re going to be drinking. They’re not going to waste their lives on a vast amount of bad wine, that’s for sure.”
Taina Vilkuna MW
Taina also said Alko staff were learning to communicate to this group in just eight seconds — the length of a typical TikTok, adding that new drinkers are not interested in hearing about technical details, harvest dates and “beautiful castles and 28 generations”. Instead, consumers want to feel like they have an emotional connection with the product or the producers.
Sören Polonius agreed that commercial wine volumes would probably keep falling, “but I’m still confident that we might actually be going for the better stuff than the worst stuff.”
Plus, he added, restaurants were still full of people ordering wine.
“Globally, [2023] was one of the worst years in the wine industry that we’d seen, and it created a laser focus,” said Honore Comfort, so the Wine Institute launched research to understand “who will be buying our wines 15 to 20 years from now. How do we look ahead and recognise that these generations and the younger consumers are fundamentally different?”
Honore said a lot of the shift had been driven by people’s access to information via the smartphone. Now, they can instantly discover who is producing the wine and whether the wine is sustainable or not, which has driven a fundamental change in the relationship of consumers to producers.
Not only that, but about 15 years ago, the spirits industry recognised that “wine as a category owned the relationship with food — that was when the bar became a kitchen and mixology was born. And that has taken over that traditional role of wine within a culinary space.”
In other words, wine producers can no longer rely on approaches that worked with former generations.
“When we were speaking with younger consumers, it isn’t that they don’t understand and appreciate what wine is and the unique qualities and attributes and benefits that wine brings to the table — they just feel it’s not for them.”
The Wine Institute’s research has culminated in a campaign to communicate the message that wine can play a satisfying role in life. “These digital natives are seeking more connection, and genuine and authentic experiences. They want to show others that they care. So our opportunity is how we align with the values they’re seeking. It’s a perfect opportunity for us.”
Fine Wine Distribution in the Nordics and Baltics
In a panel moderated by Editorial Director Felicity Carter, Krister Bengtsson the founder of Star Wine List, Raimonds Tomsons, the ASI Sommelier of the World 2023, and Arnt Egil Nordlien, the Product Manager Fine Wine & Auctions at Vinmonopolet, came together to talk about fine wine in the region.
Krister noted that Star Wine List tracks more than 2,900 wine lists around the world, the majority of which are in Europe, followed by North America, and then Asia and Australia.
“We went through all the stats to see which are the producers that have the widest distribution. Champagne houses take out five of the top 10 spots. Classical fine wines — let’s say Château Margaux, Vega Sicilia and Sassicaia — have a wide distribution and are picked up in many markets.”
Krister Bengtsson
Producers with a strong regional connection are less well distributed outside their own regions. “And somms love Burgundy. That is still a fact — 18 of the top 100.”
Eben Sadie is “pulling the South African train” and wines from Piedmont are also widely distributed.
With the exception of the US, however, New World regions have a harder time penetrating wine lists.
Trends that are less important than they were include the Instagram effect, where sommeliers were copying what they saw each other posting on social media. Longer wine lists are also giving way to shorter, more curated lists.
In Riga, the capital of Latvia, people are drinking French, Italian and then Spanish wines, said Raimonds Tomsons. “From the point of view of the consumer, I think it’s still very driven by brand recognition. The majority of people are looking for well-established brands they have heard of.”
Latvians love bubbles, he said, but when consumers come into his store, they typically bypass grower Champagnes — even when staff explain the merits — in favour of big brands.
Price is also an issue. “In the restaurant, everything which goes above €150 and €200 is getting more complicated to sell. In our shop, fine wines above €100,” are only for rare consumers. In general, Latvian restaurants prefer to import wines on their own behalf.
As for who the fine wine consumer is, Raimonds said it used to be well-travelled Russian tourists, but they have disappeared.
Now, he said, “it’s our mission not to educate, but to humbly explain when the situation allows that fine wine is something beyond price and well established brands. You need to guide them, and you need to explain,” and that this applies to Baltic markets in general.
Arnt Egil Nordlien outlined how the fine wine market operates in Norway and what a great deal the Norwegians get, as wines are priced according to fixed margins. This can mean that fine wines are a better deal at Vinmonopolet than in many other parts of the world.
Areni Global interviewed Arnt for our podcast series, and you can hear his insights here. Tune in to find out why people pitch tents outside the store in the depths of winter.
From Vision to Climate Change: Rethinking Excellence in Viticulture
Fine wine is, of course, an expression of time and place. But these expressions are being disrupted, overturned and challenged by climate change. Given the uncertainty, how can the world’s top wineries maintain their quality?
Pauline led a discussion that brought together: Mathieu Julien, who leads LVMH’s Vins d’Exception, which unites Domaine des Lambrays in Burgundy, Château d’Yquem and Château Cheval Blanc in Bordeaux, and Colgin Cellars in California; Mafalda Guedes, Corporate Brand Manager of Sogrape; and Heidi Mäkinen MW, partner at Viinitie, one of Finland’s leading importers.
Mathieu Julien began by saying that when you think about the history of the great estates, it’s easy to imagine that the role of owners and managers is to preserve everything. “It’s the opposite,” he said. “It is about innovating. It’s about looking for small or big improvements, starting with our very own team. It’s being restless and never satisfied.”
And when it comes to the consumer, “Our goal is to craft dreams and to set the standard. And we should never forget that”.
“Our goal is to craft dreams and to set the standard. And we should never forget that.”
Mathieu Jullien
Mathieu said that the ideal of excellence “has been the same through generations, and I think it will be the same after us and for the generation to come”.
However, it’s now critical to put sustainability at the heart of everything. “There are things that we would do in the past to aim for excellence that we would no longer do, because there will be an external cost.”
One thing that the group no longer does, for example, is use frost candles, because “all of us lighting candles in the same place creates damage to the quality of air that people breathe”. Mathieu added that he’s not trying to lecture anybody else on how to grow grapes, only that it’s something that because they have the ability to do, they therefore want to do it.
Mafalda Guedes said that at Sogrape, “sustainability draws from our purpose — to bring friendship and happiness. Everything we do has to have this outcome”.
Sogrape is working to reduce its carbon footprint and increase biodiversity — and to recover what’s been lost. To this end, Sogrape has created a biodiversity trail in the Douro where visitors can see different species and ecosystems. “People need to understand where wine actually comes from,” she said. “Wine is part of our culture and heritage,”
A third pillar is the community, “because we need people to feel secure where they live. We’re a big wine company in Portugal, so we need to lead by example.” Not only that, the company believes it can only be sustainable if all its partners are sustainable as well. “When we launched this programme, we invited all of our stakeholders to join us,” said Mafalda.
“We were able to reduce our carbon footprint by 70% just by changing to sea and rail. It takes slightly longer, but the impact has been huge. And this shows that collaborating together is really important.”
Heidi Mäkinen MW said that when thinking about community, it was also vital to consider indigenous communities and tap their knowledge about how to steward the land. “We also need to make sure that the person drinking the wine is embraced in the discussion,” she said.
And, she concluded, “we all want wine to be part of something bigger. If we don’t think about wine as being able to create value and meaning to all stakeholders, we risk wine becoming just another beverage and then it becomes very easily replaceable.”
The Future of Fine Wine Symposium concluded with a summary of the day from Essi Avellan MW, and then more wine tasting.
It was a thought-provoking day that brought some of the region’s top minds together to discuss and debate the future of fine wine which — for all the challenges ahead — looks to be in capable hands.
With deep gratitude to Samuil Angelov and all his team at Pastis and Muru restaurants, and many thanks to our partners who provided spectacular wines
