Excerpts from online coverage of the China wine scene…

–

(What, you expect them to drink Latour? How crude…)

Andrew Higgins of The Washington Post reports on the controversy surrounding executives at massive China oil company Sinopec for having a penchant for pricey Chateau Lafite:

Oil companies usually focus on barrels, but Chinese petroleum giant Sinopec is struggling to get a grip on bottles – or, to be more precise, 1,176 bottles of Chateau Lafite Rothschild and expensive Chinese liquor.

The alcohol, purchased with $245,000 in company cash, has created a public relations debacle for Sinopec, China’s biggest company by revenue. The scandal is also a headache for the ruling Communist Party, which controls the oil behemoth and appoints its top management, and has reinforced a widespread belief that big state-owned corporations serve the interests – and lavish lifestyles – of a tiny group of insiders.

Full story here.

–

(A.k.a. story 95,788 about how the Chine wine scene is taking off)

Michael Apstein, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, spots a guy selling wine pumps in the middle of bustling Hong Kong market — they’re always bustling, aren’t they? But what does it mean? Read on…

The scene stopped me in my tracks. There, on the street in the middle of the bustling market, stalls filled with fake Longchamp bags and knockoff Ralph Lauren, was a young Chinese man standing behind a table wearing a portable microphone and hawking vacuum-powered wine-pump openers.

Is this the sign that wine culture has really arrived in China?

Full story here.

–

(Sure, blame China for a problem you just said started in the 1970s)

The Economist, in an article titled Chateau Lafake, describes wine counterfeiting as “rife”:

… whereas counterfeit art has been around for centuries, wine forgery is relatively new. It started in the late 1970s when the prices of the best wines—especially those from Bordeaux—shot up. Today, with demand from China fuelling a remarkable boom, counterfeiting is rife. By some estimates 5% of fine wines sold at auction or on the secondary market are not what they claim to be on the label.

(Full story here.)

–

(Montrose is “China’s leading wine import company”? Who knew?)

And Charmaine Tan, writing on a Singapore government web site, provides some general info about the China wine market:

According to Don St. Pierre, president of importer ASC Fine Wines, the profile of the average wine drinker is someone who is in the mid-20s to 30s, and who is aspiring to a more sophisticated lifestyle.

Full post here.

The speed of change in China is sometimes hard to fathom even if you live here. Three years ago, the April Fool’s joke on this blog was that a Chinese winery planned to acquire Australia’s Penfold’s, with faux spokesman A.P. Fu describing the two as a great fit.

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.

(See the full post here.)

This week a Bloomberg report reported the possibility of a Chinese buyer — Bright Foods — taking over Treasury Wine Estates, which includes Penfold’s, Lindemans, and other labels. In 2011, such a move is all-too-believable. It might sound cliche to say “how times change” but it seems appropriate here.

Maybe last year’s April Fool’s joke isn’t so far-fetched…