(WP) - This was Vinexpo week in Bordeaux, a five-day trade fair held every odd-numbered year since 1981 in a cavernous exhibition hall along a manufactured lake on the northern outskirts of this historic city, once the center of the world wine trade. More than 2,300 wineries, international wine companies, importers, negociants and national trade associations vied for the attention of 48,000 attendees of 120 nationalities: importers, retailers, brokers and journalists looking to pad their wine lists and article portfolios.

Yet while any trade fair strives to project energy and a positive vibe, Vinexpo 2015 is fighting a tide of competition from other fairs and other markets. Globalization of the wine industry has created new centers of power hoping to lure buyers and consumers, creating problems for more traditional markets, including Bordeaux.

Yet while any trade fair strives to project energy and a positive vibe, Vinexpo 2015 is fighting a tide of competition from other fairs and other markets. Globalization of the wine industry has created new centers of power hoping to lure buyers and consumers, creating problems for more traditional markets, including Bordeaux.

Producers exhibit here because they want to reach new markets. Importers and retailers come because they want new products that will set them apart from their competitors back home. Products range from high-end, first-growth Bordeaux and Grand Cru champagne to more proletarian products. (Trend alert: fruit-infused wines.)

Michael Flynn, familiar to Washington diners as the former sommelier at Kinkead’s, came to Vinexpo as the Texas state manager for a boutique wine distributor called Favorite Brands, looking to bolster his Bordeaux list at a number of price points. When I met up with him, just a few hours after the fair opened, he had already branched out. “I just found a new line of Chablis to replace one I can no longer get,” he said. “And a producer of fabulous Sancerre and Pouilly-Fumé I’m very excited about.”