Chinese to get 'hands on' wine experience

SOUTH Australia will host half of a 100-strong Chinese wine trade delegation due to arrive on April 3.

Funded by peak wine body Wine Australia, regional tourism groups, the State Goverment and Tourism Australia the estimated $500,000 program will be the biggest initiative for Wine Australia this year, said Wine Australia Asia director Lucy Anderson.

The aim is to establish new networks of wine specialists in Australia's fastest growing wine market, expected to overtake Canada this year as Australia's third largest export market.

The "hand-picked one-hundred" will be billeted to sixteen regions across Australia including SA's Adelaide Hills, Barossa, Clare and Eden valleys, Coonawarra, McLaren Vale and Langhorne Creek before a final event in Sydney on April 8.

Wineries playing host include Foster's Group's Treasury Wine Estates, Pernod Ricard and as well as smaller companies such as McLaren Vale's Chapel Hill winery.

"This is not just an exercise designed to challenge our logistics, it is the first step towards developing a new and informed generation of Chinese wine influence," Ms Anderson said.

"We hoping to have reach beyond Shanghai and Beijing to about 25 different cities across mainland China."

Food and wine journalists and educators will make up 20 per cent of the delegation and will focus mainly on SA regions, she said.

The majority of visitors, however, will be importers - a small number compared with Jacob's Creek brand owner Pernod Ricard's event in September last year where it hosted its entire 600-strong Chinese workforce in the Barossa Valley.

Other regions hosting the delegation are WA's Great Southern and Margarte River regions, Heathcote, Yarra Valley, Rutherglen and Mornington Peninsula in Victoria, Orange and the Hunter Valley in New South Wales and Tasmania.