How about selling some into China ?

There is no need to go over what a huge industry it already is there, and how much wine they sell on their internal market.

But faint heart never won fair lady and the same can be said – different phrase of course – of New Zealand wine exports.

The New Zealand Government has announced it will help the wine market here to try to sell over there with a $1.2 million boost. Economic Development Minister Gerry Brownlee said the money would support the wine industry's initiative to sell $2 billion worth of wine into the United States by 2020. Today we sell $1 billion. That's a fair old leap, but double according to the industry.

It's not just the Government stumping up with cash. According to the New Zealand Herald the amount will be matched by the winemakers themselves.

The initiative also will take more wine into China, hopefully.

The market in China is a different proposition and may be more complicated.

China, at the moment, produces wine, and not just rice wine. It is, in fact, the sixth biggest producer of wine in the world.

It has 600 wineries and produced 698 million litres of wine in 2008.

It's best known wine region is known as the Silk Road area or Xinjiang in China's north west.

It may be that we sell more than wine to that country.

The Chinese Government has laid down a 2015 "wine vision" which has set a target of a 50 per cent increase in wine production in five years. The "vision" also aims to improve wine quality, introduce more types of wine to the country and increase the skills and knowledge of people in both viticulture and winemaking.

It is possible that New Zealand should look at selling some of its technology and skills into China as well as its wine. Though many may see this as killing the goose that laid the golden egg, if we don't do it someone else will.

It may also mean if we sell the technology and skills of making a sauvignon blanc, we can expand the taste for it in China, and sell our own top notch brands into a knowledgeable market.

New Zealand Winegrowers chairman Stuart Smith has echoed the need to move in to those markets at the higher end of the product range. There has also been acknowledgement of the benefits of promoting in the Untied States, China and Europe as a group – the Government initiative involves 58 wines from 21 wineries around New Zealand.

This is another way of reinforcing New Zealand's need to stick to the high value, high return end of the market. Flirting with low cost wine, the Government seems to be saying as well as many in the industry, could well be flirting with disaster.