With RMB WineX around the corner and on every Jo’burg street light, you’d think it unlikely that we’re probably living in the end times of wine shows.  The ghost of Ogden Nash channelled the following communication to Monica Mountjoy at the RMB WineX office in Johannesburg.

“I think that I shall never see
WineX posters as lovely as a street light
Indeed, unless the posters fall
I’ll never see the light at all.”

For things do not look good for wine show impresarios like the Wine Lizard. The Drinks Business reports that next year’s Vinexpo Beijing has been “cancelled due to a slowdown in the growth of imported wine sales in China as well as the lack of demand from potential exhibitors who have already invested money and resources in other events next year.”

Meanwhile dates for Cape Town WineX “have still to be confirmed” according to the WineX website. Could it have gone the way of WineX, that hip US wine magazine the show was presumably named after. Defunct?

It was not even a year ago that Vinexpo cancelled its first ever consumer show in New York. “Called Rendez-Vous by Vinexpo, it failed to attract enough exhibtiors [sic], having filled only 52 tastings areas out of the 150 reserved” according to TDB.