Will Hong Kong’s bunker-like wine storage facilities crop up in the mainland?(1)

Auction Houses In Hong Kong Have Seen Surge In Mainland China Buyers Since 2008

Since the lifting of wine import duties in 2008, Hong Kong has quickly emerged as one of the world’s top wine markets. With imports surging to US$858 million last year, Sotheby’s holding a string of 15 sell-out wine auctions in a row, and Christie’s predicting that the astronomical spending of Chinese wine lovers will help Asia dominate the wine market for the next 20 years, it’s not surprising that demand for bunker-like wine storage facilities has boomed in Hong Kong in recent years. From Bloomberg:

Fergus Fung swipes his card across a sensor and waits as his face is scanned by a computer to match his profile. A steel door opens and the Hong Kong entrepreneur enters a vault that holds his treasure of Bordeaux and Burgundy.

This is the Hong Kong Wine Vault, one of more than 15 repositories that have been set up in the past three years in the Chinese city as it overtook London and New York as the world’s biggest auction market for top wine labels like Chateau Lafite, Domaine Romanée-Conti and Krug. The temperature is a constant 13 Celsius and humidity is 75 percent, protected by 4 inches of insulation on the walls, ceiling and floors.

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“[The Hong Kong wine market has] exploded, and you need logistics to support that,” said Robert Sleigh, who runs Sotheby’s Asia wine business. “Now there are world-class wine storage facilities in Hong Kong.”

The city needs them. Temperatures can soar to 35 degrees Celsius, with relative humidity near 100 percent, factors that could render a $75,000 bottle of Chateau d’Yquem undrinkable. Moreover, few collectors have room for cellars, with 99 percent of the population living in apartments.

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