Note: I just received this information from guest contributor P.A. Make sure to check out his comment at the bottom of this post.
By Joyce Bim
Top Chinese winery Great Wall today announced it will acquire Australian wine label Penfolds. Southcorp, the label’s owner, confirmed the deal is all but done, but refused to release details of the price.
Great Wall’s business development director, A.P. Fu, told reporters the company was excited about growing its presence in foreign markets. “Given its extensive range of wines, long tradition, and superb marketing strategies, Penfolds is a great fit with our business model,” he said.
Great Wall, in an effort to emulate the success of Penfolds, will market its labels side-by-side with those of the legendary winery.
“We will market Grange Shiraz alongside our new wine, Great South Wall Shiraz,” said Fu. “In terms of Penfold’s popular ‘Bin’ series, such as Bin 407, Bin 389, and so on, we will create a ‘Ping’ series.”
Fu said longer-term plans include exporting Australian grapes to China for blending with Chinese juice. “We plan to have labels that show the close cooperation between our two peace-loving nations,” said Fu, who added that one idea is a label showing a panda and a koala hugging.
This move has not caught other Chinese wine-makers flatfooted, as there are already reports that Dynasty is in the final stages of buying Robert Mondavi wines in the United States, while other Chinese companies have been taking their checkbooks to France. One conglomerate has been talking about using part of China’s massive foreign reserves to buy the entire Bordeaux region.
And, in case you have not already guessed, this…
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April fool’s joke!
(Happy April Fool’s Day)
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My mouth was hanging wide open in disbelief…then I saw the April Fools! You got me Jim! Very funny.
Boyce, just as we were casually commenting here. Decanter reports on Chinese snapping up Bordeaux in time for Olympics 2008!
Here’s the link:
http://www.decanter.com/news/224726.html
@ 8 Songs,
I know you’re being sarcastic.
@ asti,
I hope you are being sarcastic, too.
@ Daniel,
It sounds like there WILL be a lot of fine wine at the Olympics, given the amount of stock in this country at the moment.
@ Oenoli,
Maybe they can do a whole series of bottles – pandas hugging koalas, koalas hugging pandas, and… well, I’ll leave it to your imagination.
Cheers, Boyce
Excellent stuff! I’d love to see a panda hugging a koala though))
no sense at all to raise “China Threat” issue at this sensitive time. not funny!
This is certainly a nice joke with a Chinese twist to it. Good grace … might as well say Beijing Olympics to serve fine and rare wines … Nice efforts though.
That’s not funny! For a moment I was absolutely aghast. Your contributor should find a less sensitive subject to make jokes about.