Winemakers look east
VINCENT YU – AP
A visitor sits in a wine booth during the Hong Kong International Wine and Spirits Fair. Current growth rates imply that China could become the world’s biggest wine market in the next 20 years.
HONG KONG -- As growth slows in their traditional markets, winemakers from around the world are eager to tap demand in China, but industry players say the increased competition and a lack of a wine-drinking culture mean it won't be easy money.
Thousands of people attending a major wine and spirits trade fair last week in Hong Kong sipped and spat countless vintages made by producers ranging from boutique vineyards in New Zealand to famed chateaux from France's Bordeaux region. Others were in town to attend a wine conference that featured speakers including Hollywood director Francis Ford Coppola.
Many are keen to get a foothold in China's wine market, which has taken off in recent years, particularly at the high end, as newly wealthy collectors splurge for bottles of fine French wines at auctions in Hong Kong. The southern Chinese city abolished wine import duties in 2008 in a bid to become a regional wine center, and imports surged by nearly 60 percent in the first nine months of 2011 to $940 million.
China is the world's fastest-growing market for wine and is forecast this year to overtake Britain as the fifth-biggest, according to a report by UK-based International Wine and Spirit Research.
The report forecast that China's wine consumption will double to 250 million 12-bottle cases by 2016, from 125 million in 2010. If growth rates remain unchanged, the country could become the world's biggest wine market in the next 20 years, the report said.
The tantalizing prospect of such rapid growth drew Daniel and Lesley Jackson, husband and wife owners of Redoubt Hill Vineyard, a boutique winemaker in New Zealand's Marlborough region - famed for its sauvignon blanc - to the trade fair for the first time.
"The traditional markets, apart from Australia, are a bit stressed at the moment - Europe, Britain, America. Asia, obviously their economy is doing really well," said Daniel Jackson.
The Jacksons were trying to find a distributor in Hong Kong and China for bottles of their sauvignon blanc and pinot gris, which retail for $35 New Zealand dollars ($28).
They were among nearly 1,000 exhibitors from 37 countries hoping to cut deals with the 2,750 buyers expected to attend the fair. For the first time, vineyards from countries not usually known for their wines, including Georgia, Israel, Latvia and Malta, were in attendance.
Winemakers hope growth in China will offset flagging sales in traditionally key markets such as Europe, where a long-term decline in wine drinking has been exacerbated by the continent's government debt crisis.
"People think that because China has 1.4 billion people, it's easy to come here and sell wine, and that's the catch," said Pancho Campo, president of the Wine Academy of Spain.
China's wine market is split between the high end, where the wealthy spend thousands of dollars on bottles as investments or to drink at restaurants on special occasions, and the low end, dominated by local and foreign producers selling wine for just a few dollars a bottle or in large containers. The middle market doesn't really exist, Campo said.
Winemakers will have to work hard to educate China's new middle classes about wine, and will have to spend money promoting their vintages as they develop the middle market, Campo said.
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