South African wines making inroad into China

WITH the first 100 containers scheduled for shipping this month, a new wine brand, L’Huguenot, is set to make a bold (South African) statement in China before the year is over. By June next year, almost 2,9-million bottles of L’Huguenot will have landed in the People’s Republic, which is no small deal given that about 3,9-million bottles of South African wine in total were shipped to China during the 2010- 11 period.

L’Huguenot is the product of a joint venture between Chinese consumer products company Yangzhou Perfect, a division of Perfect (China), and Franschhoek-based Leopard’s Leap Wines. The new venture — Perfect Wines of S A — is 51% owned by the Chinese partner and 49% by Leopard’s Leap Wines. The latter is part of Hein Koegelenberg and Hanneli Rupert- Koegelenberg’s RK Portfolio of Wines, which includes La Motte and De Klerk Presidential Blend.

Although there has been a flurry of activity from the South African wine industry to capture a greater share of the giant Chinese wine market — expedited by increased wine consumption in that country and declining sales in other markets — Koegelenberg says the joint venture is due to a friendship rather than his company’s drive to grow business.

Koegelenberg estimates that Leopard’s Leap and La Motte make up between 8% and 10% of SA’s wine exports to Asia.