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Will China ever be a wine superpower?
By Celia Hatton BBC Beijing correspondent
5 September 2013 Last updated at 20:02 ET
When the European Union raised tariffs on Chinese solar panels earlier this year, China said it would investigate complaints from Chinese wine producers about the "dumping" of European wine on the Chinese market. For many it was news that China made wine at all. But it does - of widely varying quality.
"Like cough syrup." "Disgusting!" "It coats the teeth."
Fifteen years ago, a group of Beijing expats tested a selection Chinese, Californian and French wines. "The Chinese stuff can't be that bad, can it?" they asked each other.
The answer was a resounding "Yes". Unanimously, the panel ranked the Chinese wines at the bottom of the bunch. The Chinese wine was by far the cheapest, but it showed.
How things have changed. Though the Chinese market is still flooded with wine that would have rivalled the cough-syrup vintage from 1998, a growing number of Chinese wines are winning acclaim on the world stage.
Jia Bei Lan, a tiny winery in China's northern Ningxia province, famously beat a host of French rivals in 2011 to collect an international gold medal for its Bordeaux-style Grand Reserve wine from 2009.
At the time, sceptics started a rumour that Jia Bei Lan had substituted another vineyard's wine for its own. However, its fan base continues to grow. Last year, respected wine critic Jancis Robinson named the Grand Reserve 2009 as one of the two "most promising" wines she tasted on a trip to the region.
Aspiring Chinese winemakers could also look to a small winery in China's central Shaanxi province for inspiration. In a corner of China better known for coal production, Grace Vineyard's range of wines has also attracted a mountain of international awards and critical attention.
Grace's owner, Judy Leissner, took over the winery from her father 10 years ago, when she was just 24. Judy is ethnically Chinese, but she married a German man and adopted his last name. From her base in Hong Kong, she travels regularly to check on her vineyards, which produce a wide assortment of grapes, from merlot and shiraz to chardonnay and riesling.
Things did not start well for the young entrepreneur. Even though Judy employed a French winemaker to help with her first vintage, it tasted so awful that her attempts to sell it were "horrible, if not a disaster", she recalls.
"We had a million bottles, but we only sold 20,000. And out of 20,000, half of those we gave away for free."
Now she has the opposite problem. The two million bottles a year she produces have sold out every year since 2008, leaving her to allocate cases of wine between her distributors.
"For years, you're begging people to buy your wine. You get so used to running after people and then suddenly, they say, 'You don't need to beg anymore. You've sold out.'"
But don't expect bottles of high-quality Chinese wine to flood your supermarket shelves anytime soon.
A vineyard in the countryside near Beijing
China has a shortage of quality wine grapes, explains Jim Boyce, a Beijing-based wine aficionado who writes the blog, Grape Wall of China. And that means that a lot of Chinese wine contains low-end grapes that aren't sweet enough to produce interesting wine flavours.
"Most of the wine produced here is very thin, it's dry and tannic," Jim explains. "So, it's just not very good quality."
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Luxury labels are wagering millions on the belief that it is possible to produce top-notch wine on Chinese soil”
Fongyee Walker, a British woman who runs a wine-tasting school in Beijing, blames China's geography for the shortage of good wine grapes.
"Most people assume that China is so big, that there must be a place where grapes can thrive, but that's not true," she sighs.
Areas in China that are dry enough to allow grape vines to grow without succumbing to mould and disease are also extremely cold in winter, Walker explains, forcing farmers to bury their vines to protect them from plummeting temperatures. That process makes wines more expensive and shortens the lifetime of the plants.
Drinkable Chinese wines sold outside China will become a "cool oddity", Walker says, but China will never able to produce quality wine on a global scale.
Others are more optimistic. China's top three vineyards, Great Wall, Dynasty and Changyu, own half of China's domestic wine market, and blogger Jim Boyce believes that inevitable comparisons between the three are compelling them to raise their standards.
Wealthy Chinese consumers are especially fond of French wines
"Traditionally, Chinese wineries have sold wine based on nice labels, and big commercials and sponsoring and that all works," Boyce says. "But at a certain point, you'll be judged on quality and you'll be pushed by very inexpensive Italian, Spanish and Chilean wine coming into the market and you'll be pushed to improve."
Some luxury labels are also wagering millions on the belief that it is possible to produce top-notch wine on Chinese soil. Domaines Barons de Rothschild, the owners of the famous French wine estate, Chateau Lafite, have joined with a Chinese corporation, CITIC, to establish a vineyard in southern China's Yunnan province. The Chateau has yet to confirm what kind of wine the venture will produce.
Moet Hennessy, the wine and sprits wing of the French luxury giant, LVMH, is also entering the ring. The group has staked out a large patch of land in the country's northern Ningxia region, with hopes of producing the first Chinese wine made following French methods.
For China's increasingly sophisticated wine drinkers, these developments can't come soon enough. Fongyee Walker has been surprised by the increase in the number of people who sign up for her advanced wine-tasting courses, just for the love of all things red, white and bubbly.
Most of those people, she admits, still reach for French wine when they want to sip something special. Wine from Bordeaux is, by far, the most fashionable beverage among China's elite.
But eventually, Chinese wine enthusiasts may be convinced to pop open a bottle from a place much closer to home.
There is already some Chinese wine that can stand comparison to European, Australian or American output, and if the optimists are right, the days of Chateau Cough Syrup are numbered.
Chinese wine facts
World's eighth largest producer of wine; predicted to be sixth largest by 2016
Chinese consumers drink more than 1.6bn bottles of wine annually, forecast to grow by further billion by 2015
Chinese now the second biggest buyers of top claret by volume behind Germany
China imported 266 million litres of bottled wine in 2012, 10% more than in 2011
Nearly half came from France, with Spain and Italy accounting for another 17%, according to International Wine and Spirit Research
Spanish wine costing just $3 (£2) a bottle has appeared in Chinese shops in the last year or so
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23943693
ive always found it amusing how often western media uses 'super power' for China. wine? this time it is just weird and out of place.
wine related stories:
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Yao Ming's Wine Company Sets Sights On China's Growing Middle Class
By Michelle FlorCruz
on September 06 2013 10:28 AM
Yao Ming may be synonymous with basketball for most Chinese, but he's hoping the Yao name will soon become a household name as a winemaker as well. Yao Family Wines, the Napa Valley winery owned by the former NBA player and national hero in China, has announced it will lower its prices to suit the Chinese market’s growing middle class.
The 2-year-old winery, located in Northern California’s renowned wine country, has announced a new selection of cheaper wines to be marketed to China’s rising middle class. But the wines, which officially launched in China this week, aren’t exactly bargain bottles. According to the Wall Street Journal, a 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon is retailing for 535 yuan, or roughly $87. It's a significant discount from Yao’s higher-end wines, all of which are reds ranging from 1,775 yuan ($290) to 6,125 yuan ($1,000) per bottle, but the 535-yuan price tag will still likely be a bit steep for many Chinese buyers.
Though Yao is the face of the company and its primary investor, Yao Family Wines is run by old industry pros. Tom Hinde is the winemaker, and he created the newest midmarket addition, a red wine with rich plum notes. “This is [Yao's] new house wine,” Hinde said in the report, noting the former Houston Rockets center’s seal of approval. “He tasted it, gave his feedback and he likes this one a lot.”
Yao’s new venture into the wine industry mirrors the interest brewing back in his home country, with a growing number of Chinese discovering the pleasures of wine. According to figures from International Wine & Spirit Research, China has quickly become the world’s fourth-largest wine market by value and the world’s fifth-largest by volume. The research group expects a 40 percent increase in consumption in three years.
For now, however, Yao’s wines have become popular only in smaller cities. “We do much better in the second- and third-tier cities outside of Shanghai and Beijing,” Jay Behmke, the winery’s managing director, said, adding that people in Yao’s hometown Shanghai “seem to be cynical of Yao using his name on a wine label, but those in other cities look at it and think it’s cool."
http://www.ibtimes.com/yao-mings-win...-class-1403059
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Vineyards eye China for growth
September 11, 2013
Eli Greenblat
Retail reporter
Australia's best-known winemaking families have embarked on a trade mission to China just as the Communist Party's austerity drive clamps down on banquets and gifts. However, they say tightened budgets will ultimately benefit their premium wine brands.
Australia's First Families of Wine, a group of 12 family-owned wineries, are spending two weeks travelling through Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong to meet retailers, officials, shoppers and the trade press over a series of dinners and tastings.
It is the first time representatives from the families have toured China. They have made similar trips to Britain and North America.
''As a group, we are passionate about family history, provenance, stories and a pride for our flagship wines which are made from some of Australia's most iconic vineyards,'' said AFFW chairman and the managing director of Taylors Wines, Mitchell Taylor. ''We believe these values sit both culturally and socially in alignment with the values of China and these values are going to be the driving message for AFFW on this trip.''
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China looms as a key growth market for Australian wine, where it is the second-biggest supplier and importer after France.
Australia has a 15 per cent market share in value and 13 per cent in volume in the imported wine market, with the region's growth a handy counter to flat sales in mature markets such as North America and Europe.
In the year to December 2012, Australian wine sales to China rose 15 per cent.
Mr Taylor said the Chinese were impressed by the history and longevity of the wine brands that form AFFW. ''The Chinese respect tradition, family values and longevity, so when we are talking 1200 years of wine-making heritage among the 12 of us, you can just see they take that in.''
Formed in 2009, AFFW brought together 12 family-owned wineries to help lead a public campaign to highlight the quality and diversity of Australian wine.
Its members include d'Arenberg, Jim Barry Wines, Brown Brothers, Taylors, Henschke, Yalumba, Howard Park, De Bortoli and Tyrrell's, and represent 16 Australian wine-growing regions across four states.
Mr Taylor said an austerity campaign by the Chinese government had drained demand for wine, but that once the thrift policy eased higher-priced wines would emerge stronger. ''[The] Chinese believe it will improve in another 12 to 18 months.''
http://www.smh.com.au/business/viney...910-2tila.html