Wine Institute ad campaign aimed to educate China’s middle class

Ad campaign aimed to educate booming nation's middle class about value, quality of Golden State's wine 

A recent Wine Institute ad campaign, seen here in a Shanghai subway, was designed to tell potential customers that California is known for more than movies and Mickey Mouse.

In one, a blond young man carries a surfboard through a grassy field. In another, the Golden Gate Bridge towers over the Pacific on a sunny day.

In the minds of American consumers, those images don't evoke California's $18.5 billion wine industry. But in China, where awareness of California wines is low, and an emerging middle class is increasingly buying imports and luxury brands, the state's iconic images are being used to tap into a market with huge growth potential.

The advertising campaign, which lasted a year and ended in July, was a project of the Wine Institute, an association of California wineries. The idea was to connect the California that Chinese consumers know with an industry that wants their attention.

U.S. vintners shipped $35.7 million of wine to China during the first eight months of this year, up 20 percent from a year ago, according to the Wine Institute. California wines make up 90 percent of those U.S. exports.

And the value of the country's wine exports to Hong Kong more than doubled during the same period, reaching $115.5 million. About a third of that wine finds its way to mainland China, Gallagher said.