OIV Releases Program for Its First World Wine Congress in Asia

With one month left before the opening of the 47th OIV World Congress of Vine and Wine, the International Organisation of Vine and Wine has released the draft preliminary scientific program for the meeting, which will be held from Oct. 12 to Oct. 16 in Yinchuan, in China’s Ningxia wine region.

The congress will be the first OIV world congress held in Asia, a step the organization is presenting as an important expansion of its geographic reach at a time when China is seeking a larger role in the global wine sector. The event will bring together scientists, researchers, policymakers and industry professionals, and will run alongside the OIV General Assembly.

According to the OIV, the scientific committee selected 271 oral presentations and 149 posters from 35 countries. The program is organized into four main tracks: viticulture, oenology, economy and law, and safety and health. The overall theme of the congress is “Shaping new paradigms for the global Vine and Wine sector: transforming to meet challenges, innovating to ignite vitality, and sustaining to anchor a shared future.”

The strongest focus of the program is on climate adaptation and vineyard resilience. In the viticulture sessions, researchers are scheduled to present work on drought resistance, saline and cold stress, new resistant varieties, rootstocks, deficit irrigation, soil management, microbial terroir, disease control and precision viticulture. Many of the papers are tied directly to the effects of warming temperatures and water scarcity on grape production.

Presentations from China make up a large share of the schedule and reflect the country’s effort to position its wine sector as a site of research and development as well as production. Several papers focus on Ningxia and the eastern foothills of the Helan Mountains, the area hosting the congress. Topics include resilient production in dry and cold conditions, bacterial communities in reclaimed vineyards, grape breeding for stress resistance, disease monitoring systems, mechanization, and studies of wine region characteristics in China.

The viticulture program also shows how broad the international research agenda has become. Scientists from Chile will present work on shading nets as protection against thermal and radiative stress in Grenache and on old País vineyards in the Maule Valley. French researchers will present work on vineyard demonstrator networks designed to improve resilience to climate change, as well as disease control systems that combine microbial biocontrol, automated anti-rain shelters and artificial intelligence tools. Researchers from Spain, Italy, Portugal, South Africa, Brazil, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Uruguay, Croatia, Argentina and Mexico are also on the schedule.

In the oenology sessions, one of the clearest themes is adaptation to changing grape composition under climate pressure. The program includes several papers on high-sugar, low-acid grapes, tartaric acid management, new yeast strains, malolactic fermentation, phenolic stability and aroma control. A large group of studies will examine dealcoholized and partially dealcoholized wines, an area that has drawn growing attention from both producers and regulators.

That part of the program includes research from South Africa, Spain, Germany, Austria, Portugal and Ukraine on dealcoholization technologies, sensory quality, mouthfeel, aroma retention and the legal and strategic questions surrounding reduced-alcohol products. Other oenology papers will cover oxidation, sulfur reduction, sparkling wine production, alternative aging methods, vineyard-to-bottle elemental profiling, artificial intelligence for wine classification, and wildfire smoke marker analysis.

The economy and law track points to a second major concern for the sector: how to remain commercially viable in a changing market. Papers in that section will address the structure of China’s wine industry, supply chains in Ningxia, legal disputes over vineyard land leases, retail concentration, digital labeling, appellation systems, wine tourism, e-commerce and the economics of precision viticulture. There is also a notable number of papers on no- and low-alcohol wines, including pricing, legal definitions and consumer response.

Wine tourism will be a major topic in that section, with comparative work involving Bordeaux, Ningxia and Mendoza, and presentations on global tourism trends, virtual assistants for wine tourism marketing and the development of new regional narratives for Ningxia. Other papers will address geographical indications, traceability, smart labels, shared brands, cultural heritage, wine diplomacy and circular economy practices.

The safety and health sessions will cover consumer behavior, packaging footprint, by-product recovery, phenolic compounds in dealcoholized wines, and alcohol consumption patterns among young adults. Several presentations are focused on how health concerns are reshaping wine demand, including work on Italian consumer openness to dealcoholized wine and comparative research on no- and low-alcohol wine preferences in Italy, Germany and Spain.

The OIV said the congress is intended to highlight both global research trends and the rapid development of China’s vine and wine industry. Ningxia has become the center of that effort. The region, located between the Helan Mountains and the Yellow River, has spent years building its profile as China’s leading fine wine area, with local authorities promoting it as a model for quality production, tourism and sustainability.

In a statement distributed by the OIV, Chinese Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Zhang Zhili said China’s decision to host the congress and the OIV General Assembly reflects the country’s “determination and confidence” in deeper integration with the global vine and wine industry. He said China, as a new OIV member state, had taken the initiative to bid for the event and had actively fulfilled its responsibilities within the organization.

The release of the program gives a clearer picture of how the congress will frame the sector’s immediate challenges. Across the four tracks, the same issues appear repeatedly: climate risk, market pressure, lower-alcohol products, digital tools, sustainability standards, legal adaptation and the need to connect scientific research with industry practice. In that sense, the Yinchuan congress is set to serve not only as a scientific meeting but also as a marker of how wine institutions are responding to changes in production, consumption and regulation across different regions of the world.