Wine & Music Part 5: What Classical Music Can Teach Wine Brands

Strictly speaking, the Classical period sits between the Baroque and Romantic eras, roughly from 1750 to 1820, associated with composers such as Haydn, Mozart and early Beethoven. In everyday language, however, classical music has become shorthand for a much broader tradition encompassing orchestral, chamber, operatic and other composed music spanning several centuries. Classical music and wine have much in common: long histories, specialist vocabulary, technical expertise, rituals and structured grids about what constitutes quality. They also share a less useful characteristic: both can appear elitist, snobbish and intimidating to people who feel they do not know enough to participate. Classical music, much like wine, is a formidable cultural legacy. The challenge is how to keep that legacy commercially alive and culturally relevant in today’s consumer market context.

Classical music is not dying, however, some of its formats are struggling.

The Association of British Orchestras' 2025 report recorded almost 3,000 UK performances reaching 3.1 million people, but compared with 2019 the number of concerts was down around 16% and attendance 26%. The organisation cautions that its underlying reporting period was still affected by post-pandemic recovery, so those numbers should not be interpreted as a simple collapse in demand. Other research suggests demand is actually broadening.

In 2025, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra found that 86% of UK adults were interested in attending some form of orchestral concert, up from 76% in 2022. But there was an important distinction: only 23% expressed interest in traditional core repertoire such as Beethoven, Mahler or Mozart, compared with 37% for orchestral performances of pop music, up from 25% three years prior. The RPO's 2026 research goes further: public liking for orchestral music reached a record high and more people were encountering it outside the traditional concert hall.

A separate 2026 UK study commissioned for Fever's Candlelight series found that among people who had never attended a classical concert, 20% felt they did not know enough to attend and 14% considered concerts too formal. Asked what could make classical experiences more attractive, 29% chose genre blending and 27% visual effects. The research data suggests perhaps classical music has less of a product problem and more of an occasion and presentation problem; a problem which the wine industry is currently facing. To overcome these issues a new formula emerged, which brings us to the Ministry of Sound Classical.

Case study: Ministry of Sound meets the orchestra

Ministry of Sound opened in Elephant & Castle, London, in 1991, inspired by New York’s legendary Paradise Garage. Founder Justin Berkmann’s priority was not décor or celebrity but sound: the club was specifically engineered around an exceptional sound system and a dancefloor-first experience. It became one of the defining institutions of British dance culture and subsequently expanded far beyond the nightclub into record labels, compilation albums, radio, events, clothing and publishing, building Ministry of Sound into a globally recognisable dance-music brand.

That history makes the orchestral move less incongruous than it initially appears. Ministry has always been in the business of curating music and creating a powerful collective emotional experience around it. By the 2010s, it also had something enormously valuable: decades of tracks carrying strong memories for an audience that had grown up with club culture.

A fresh concept began in Australia in 2017 as "Ministry of Sound: Orchestrated”. Dance tracks by artists including Fatboy Slim, Massive Attack and others were rearranged for a 50-piece symphony orchestra, DJ and vocalists. The first Sydney performance sold out. Demand generated an encore season including the Sydney Opera House, which also sold out, followed by a larger national tour.

Creative director Groove Terminator and the Ministry of Sound team asked how an audience that had grown up clubbing could continue experiencing the music they loved without recreating another late night in a nightclub. As he put it, the alternative could mean having “a nice glass of wine”, experiencing the music and still getting home at a respectable hour. The insight has subsequently been borne out more broadly: attendance at UK retro dance events rose 19% between 2024 and 2025, while recent academic research shows electronic dance music continues to provide social connection, self-expression and wellbeing for participants well into their 40s, 50s and beyond. While the audience had aged, the emotional attachment had not, suggesting what needed redesigning was the occasion.

The UK iteration now combines Ministry of Sound's dance catalogue with the London Concert Orchestra. Its Royal Albert Hall shows sell out repeatedly, leading to its largest residency yet in 2026, while the production has expanded into festivals and an international tour. The success is more than putting strings behind dance records. It is about repackaging familiar cultural value for a different occasion and creating audience exchange between two established worlds.

Pause here and take note: repackaging familiar cultural value for a different occasion; creating audience exchange between two established worlds.

What should wine learn from it?

Lesson 1: Separate the product from the format

Wine, like classical music, sometimes treats its traditional method of presentation as though it were intrinsic to the product and yet it is not. A tasting room, guided flight, masterclass or formal wine dinner is a delivery format. If people stop attending, that does not necessarily mean they have rejected wine any more than weaker concert-hall attendance means consumers have rejected orchestral music. The useful question is: which part do people still value, and which part needs redesigning? Masterclasses still attract consumers and professionals looking for a more educational format.

Lesson 2: Crossover works when both sides add something

Ministry of Sound brings recognition, nostalgia, energy and an established audience. The orchestra brings musicianship, scale, texture and spectacle. Neither is window dressing for the other. Wine collaborations should be judged by the same standard. A DJ beside a branded bar, artwork on a bottle or logo attached to a festival is not inherently a collaboration. The strongest concepts create an experience that could not exist in quite the same way without both partners.

Lesson 3: Follow the audience as its occasions change

The Ministry example started with a very basic consumer insight: people who loved club culture at 25 might still love it at 45, but the way they want to participate and consumer it has changed. Wine has ageing loyal consumers, younger consumers drinking differently and enormous competition for leisure time. Instead of trying to force everyone back into established wine occasions, wineries and wine bars could create new ones: music-led multi-producer tastings, evening cultural residencies, performances paired with discovery flights, collaborations between regions, restaurants and cultural venues. The objective is not trying to make wine look younger and cooler, it is about making the occasion worth attending.

Lesson 4: Familiarity can be the route into discovery

People can arrive at Ministry of Sound Classical because they know Insomnia and discover the emotional impact of an orchestra. Wine experiences often reverse that logic: many tasting rooms, wine events and producer tasting feel obliged to teach the consumer, they put on a powerpoint set of slides on a screen and set out to educating them first about the grape, region, vintage and producer, and then perhaps let them enjoy themselves. Not every wine tasting should come in the format of a masterclass, and that is the problem. However, there is another route.

Lead with something people already want to experience and allow wine to become part of the discovery.

Classical music’s recent evolution suggests that the issue is not necessarily heritage itself, but the assumption that heritage must always be delivered through the same formats, rituals and environments. Ministry of Sound Classical shows that established cultural assets can be made relevant to new occasions without stripping away their identity. Ministry did not need to find a new audience by abandoning its past. It found a new format through which an existing audience could experience that past differently. For wine, that means looking beyond the question of how to attract people back to traditional tastings and, asking instead: what contemporary experiences, partnerships and occasions could make wine worth seeking out again? The opportunity is to keep the substance [wine] and rethink the occasion by creating stronger reasons for consumers to participate.

Image Source: RG Live https://www.rg.live/events/ministry-of-sound-classical-royal-albert-hall-2027