Wine Trends to Watch in 2016
Posted on Thu 21st Jan 2016 at 11:52
Whether or not you subscribe to the idea of yearly trends in the food and drink industry, experts will carry on making predictions regardless.
We’ve combed through some of the top trend predictions for 2016 to see if we can divine how the on-trade wine industry might be affected.
Our top picks are:
- Storytelling Heston Blumenthal kicked off this phenomenon years ago, but now everyone else is catching up and creating stories and characters around their food and drink. While some will take it to the extreme, with things such as immersive dining and cocktail bars masquerading as detective agencies, others will simply up the interactive elements of their offering, or focus on crafting better and more believable stories for each dish or product. For bars and restaurants selling wine, this could mean creating carefully detailed wine menus which explain the story behind each bottle, or finding more interactive ways for customers to choose and taste their wines.
- Lesser-known wines Consumers are branching out in their wine choices, and this year more breakthrough regions are expected. After the burgeoning success of Alpine wine, championed by an ever-growing number of ski and German-themed restaurants, everything is possible and consumers are expected to become ever-more adventurous as the year goes on.
- Bag-in-box wine (no, really) This is probably the weirdest prediction we read, but experts are indeed forecasting that there will be increasing number of restaurants serving bag-in-box wine in 2016. The idea is that the wine be of high quality, and that serving it in a box changes consumer perceptions of what bag-in-box wine can be like. It’s certainly a talking a point.
- Wine by the glass This ‘trend’ has been around for a while, but the introduction of the ‘Coravin’ last year has encouraged even more venues to explore serving wines by the glass. The beauty of the system is, of course, that restaurants can offer their customers more expensive wines than they would be able to do normally - Les 110 de Taillevent in Cavendish Square, for example, offers Domaine Leflaive Chevalier Montrachet 2006 for £74 a glass. Giving customers the chance to try wines that would be out of their budget by the bottle is a great way to build a reputation for serving outstanding wines and caring for your customer.