Bordeaux wine school looking to expand in China

One of France's oldest oenology schools, La Tour Blanche, is fighting falling enrolment through a tie-up with a Beijing wine school, the latest in a string of Bordeaux institutes to look East for their future.

The wine school, which just turned 100, today teaches the ropes of the trade to 150 students in the Tour Blanche estate in Sauternes, near the southwestern French wine capital of Bordeaux.

The China scheme will bring 25 extra students into the classrooms in 2013, and 50 in 2014, offering them twin training in wine and food pairing.

At a time of falling enrolment, the numbers are "significant," said Alex Barrau, director of La Tour Blanche School of Viticulture and Oenology.

For La Tour Blanche, the scheme is also a way to spur sales of Sauternes, a sweet white wine made from grapes affected by noble rot that was once coveted by tsars but is often overlooked by today's consumers.

China is now Bordeaux's largest export client, and analysts at the London-based International Wine and Spirit Research recently predicted China will outdrink the United States to become the world's thirstiest nation within 20 years.

This rapid expansion creates a demand for wine education, and Bordeaux's wine schools hope to provide that training.