Moet to make 'Champagne' in China

China's newly-minted middle classes will soon be quaffing home-grown "Champagne" after the makers of Moet Chandon announced plans to create China's first sparkling wine using the traditional French methods.

For centuries, the impoverished farmers of Ningxia have grown watermelons and berries on the fertile flood plains of the Yellow river.

 

But now they are switching to grow Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes after Moet Hennessy, the makers of Dom Perignon and Krug, signed a deal to create China’s first-ever “Champagne”.

 

The world’s best-known Champagne brand will plant 163 acres of vines in Ningxia, which lies just south of the Mongolian steppe and the Gobi desert and whose population is one-third Muslim. The tiny region is China’s third-poorest and its farmers earn less than £2,000 a year.

 

Moet is hoping its Chinese bubbly, which will sell under its Chandon label, will slake the country’s growing thirst for wine and other luxury goods. The first bottles will be ready in three years, a spokesman said. “This will be the first sparkling wine in China made according to traditional methods.” Moet has also recently announced a similar plan in India, where its “Nashik Chandon” sparkling wine is currently ageing in cellars and will be released next year.

 

Only wines from the eponymous region of France can be labelled Champagne, but Moet’s experts said the soil and climate of Ningxia closely match the terroir of Rheims, even if the placid waters of the Marne have been swapped for the muddy and often turbulent Yellow river.

 

 

Moet’s Chinese fizz will be produced by the company’s experts at purpose-built winery jointly owned with a local state-owned agriculture company, Ningxia Nongken, who boasted that the French house had picked them from nine other possible partners. A spokesman for Ningxia Nongken said planting would begin next April or May.

 

Moet has not revealed the cost of its Chinese sparkling wine, but it will be significantly cheaper that it’s imported Champagne which attracts heavy duties, selling on the mainland for at least £45 a bottle.

 

“This move shows how serious the big Champagne houses are now about breaking into China,” said Nick Pegna, director of Berry Bros. & Rudd wine merchants in Hong Kong, “This wine will have lower duties and will help educate a whole new demographic of wine consumers.”

 

China currently drinks around one million bottles of Champagne a year but the market is growing rapidly and Champagne producers are desperate to establish a firm foothold in a market that has been compared to America a century ago. “Having a local brand is a long-term strategy that will allow Moet to capture people who cannot afford Champagne now but will progress up through the range of brands and eventually drink Champagne,” added Mr Pegna.

 

Although most Chinese still prefer to drink beer and “baijiu” – the country’s fiery grain spirit - China’s wine consumption more than doubled between 2005 and 2009 to more than 1bn bottles a year, according to the analysts International Wine and Spirit Research (IWSR). Stories abound – some perhaps apocryphal – of newly-minted Chinese millionaires mixing Château Lafite-Rothschild with Coca-Cola, or holding lavish parties where the great vintages of the 1970s and 1980s are tipped together into silver punch bowls. Their seemingly boundless appetite for the best French wines has seen Hong Kong merchants reporting some Chinese writing “blank cheques” to get their hands on the top vintages.

 

Meanwhile, China’s own wine production is set to double in the next four years, according to IWSR, and is increasing in quality. This week, a Chinese Bordeaux-style red wine called “Jia Bei Lan”, also grown in Ningxia, won the award for “Red Middle East, Far East & Asia over £10” at the Decanter World Wine Awards in London.