Chinese snap up Aussie vines in hunt for top drop(2)
Major winemaker Tyrell's said China had gone from accounting for two percent of its business five years ago to "around 35 percent and growing", mostly involving the wholesale of its wine under private Chinese labels.
Tyrell's was working closely with a Chinese company that had just purchased one of the Hunter vineyards and international manager Grant Bellve said the rush of foreign buyers had been a blessing for the local industry.
"If they didn't purchase where would those wineries be? Would the banks own them?" said Bellve.
He added that while the Chinese buyers can afford to buy the wineries, they still needed Australian production expertise.
"Most of (the Chinese buyers) have money that you and I would only dream about. If they do buy wineries then they need the expertise, (and) it allows you to get potential new distribution through unbelievable channels."
Bellve said it was too early to say whether Chinese ownership of Australian vineyards would be a permanent trend or how positive it would be for the industry in the long-term.
"I think they like to have somewhere that they can bring their customers to rather than saying 'this is a winery that produces for us'. They can put their flag up," he said.
"The biggest thing... is to get them to understand that wine is not a commodity, it's an agriculture. They think it's like a production line, and that's the key thing I think in getting them to understand the business."
Neil McGuigan, from premier label McGuigan's, said the purchases to date of a few small wineries in the Hunter were for hobby or status purposes and "not a game-changer for the Australian wine industry".
But he said some in the industry believed vineyard purchases were part of a larger long-term plan and warned against "export(ing) our knowledge and all our 200 years of making wine without something coming back our way".
"It's about getting land in Australia, it's about getting water. I think the Chinese are looking more than 10 years out," he said.
"They may be saying to themselves 'wine for the next 10 years and then at least we're in Australia, at least we're in a fantastic climate, we've got water, we've got land -- who knows where it could go from there?'."
Like Bellve, McGuigan saw consumer education -- getting "people from (drinking) Coca-Cola onto wine" -- and greater access to Chinese distribution networks as key.
"The French are here, the Americans are here, the New Zealanders are here, there are a lot of countries in here already so why not the Chinese?" he said of the Hunter Valley.
"As long as the wine that is made is good quality wine and the reputation of Australian wine is protected... what's the downside?"
