By Jim Boyce | Want to taste a Chardonnay made just after England squeezed Hong Kong from China via the First Opium War? Or a Château Lafite-Rothschild made during the 1860s when European missionaries were both fermenting religion in Yunnan and planting vines they brought from home? Or, for the sweet tooth, a Château d’Yquem made just after France defeated China in the Sino-Franco war?
Fine Wine Experience is slated to offer that experience on October 25 in Hong Kong with a dinner featuring European vintages from the 19th century, a contentious time in the eyes of many in China, especially vis-a-vis the nations from where these wines hail. From the bottles to the bigger picture, there is lots of history.
“To taste a wine made in the 19th century is a paradoxical experience—the wine is alive, still offering its scent and its taste 12 decades of more later,” say the organizers. “At the same time it is made by generations of people all now gone.”
Gone but certainly not forgotten.
Similar 19th-century dinners were held in 2009 and 2010 in London with Christie’s, using wine from the company’s cellar. According to the organizers, it took five years to find wines for the upcoming feast.
“Many of the bottles are ‘ex-cellars’ recent releases from the producers themselves, or have been recently examined and in some cases recorked by the estate,” say the organizers, who add that the list was built on a provenance-first basis.
Quite a list, too, with 14 bottles, including from Bordeaux, Burgundy, Jura, Sauternes, Tokaj and Madeira. And the dinner, at Arbor in Hong Kong, will feature dishes inspired by the 19th century, too.
You don’t see dinners like this very often, and they don’t come cheap, with this one priced at HKD108,000. But if you have the money and a desire for a unique experience, you can find details here.
By Jim Boyce | Why isn’t China a top-five wine producer when it is second only to Spain for vineyard coverage? This question usually leads to one source: the OIV, or International Organisation of Vine and Wine, which needs to work on its press releases.
The OIV’s global update in April did rank China as the runner-up in terms of vineyards:
Spain remains a clear leader in terms of the cultivated surface area with nearly 1 mha [1 million hectares], ahead of China (0.87 mha) and France (0.79 mha).
So why isn’t China among the leaders for production, along with Italy (4.3 billion liters), France (3.7), Spain (3.2), the United States (23.3) and Australia (13.7)?
Because not all vineyards are equal. The OIV numbers combine grapes meant for eating, either fresh or dried, and for drinking. Or both unpressed and pressed grapes. Unfortunately, you only discover that by reading the footnotes of a press release that is otherwise entirely focused on wine. No wonder the trade and media, and in turn consumers, get confused.
Anyway, China is easily the world’s top producer of grapes meant for eating. A recent USDA report predicts world production of fresh table grapes at 24.3 million tonnes for the current marketing year, with China expected to produce 11.2 million tons, or nearly 50 percent. The next nearest competitors: India and Turkey, at 3 million and 2.1 million each
Wine grapes pale in comparison. I haven’t had time to check recent vineyard stats but it’s safe to say that, at most, only 15 percent in China are dedicated to wine. For perspective, Ningxia, which has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade, has about 40,000 hectares of wine grapes.
I wrote about this topic in 2015 when BBC, after an OIV press release, posted that China had become the second biggest wine-growing country, a statement that, to its credit, it corrected. The numbers have popped up numerous times since, including a recent story in South China Morning Post. The best solution to avoid confusion is for OIV to make as clear as the most translucent Vinho Verde just what their numbers represent.
By Jim Boyce | Quite a story by Al Jazeera about China’s tariff on U.S. wines, one featuring Napa Valley’s Honig. And, in my opinion, missing a lot of context. Let’s quickly break it down.
Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds: “Winery owner Michael Honig is afraid that relationships he’s spent a decade cultivating with Chinese wine merchants have now been ruined.”
Why? Because those relationships will be politically difficult for the Chinese partners? Because higher prices for U.S. wines means those partners will look elsewhere for products? Because, if they are the type to give up a few months into a tariff, they weren’t very good partners in the first place? For some other reason?
Michael Honig: “We sell to about 25 countries outside of the US and China is certainly one of the top two or three.”
That symbolizes the position of U.S. wines vis-a-vis China, one of many nations in which they are sold. China has long been more about tomorrow, about potential, than about impressive results today. As I noted in my post “ten quick takes“:
The U.S. only exports about 12.5% of production and, in 2017, only 3.7% of those exports went to China. That means about 0.4% of total production or 1 out of every 250 bottles.
For added perspective, six times more wine goes to Canada than China, both by value and volume, and even more goes to the European Union.
I don’t mean to minimize the situation of Honig. I have no idea what else he said to Reynolds and I don’t dispute that some individual producers feel economic pain, but it is important to note China does not consume a large amount of U.S. wine.
Reynolds: “Now U.S. wines are priced out of the Chinese market compared to the fruits of Chilean, French and Australia vineyards.”
No they’re not. They’re simply pricier, at least those for which producers and importers are passing on instead of swallowing the tariff. Wines become pricier or cheaper all the time due to trade deals, currency fluctuations, market demand and other factors.
Some consumers will balk at a price rise but is only one factor. Honig himself states (see below) that consumers “want the finest things in life”. Those people realize U.S. wines aren’t cheap, aren’t “bargain bin” options, and they aren’t necessarily going to stop buying their favorite USD100Â U.S. wine because it now costs USD115.
Honig: “[Chinese consumers]Â want wine, they want the finest things in life, they know that Napa Valley produces some of the best wines in the world, so we have this great opportunity but the government is putting this huge impediment in front of us.”
Speaking of huge impediments. Between 2011 and 2017, long before the tariff, the market for bottled wine imports to China doubled, with Australia and France leading the way. During that same period, U.S. wine exports to China fell from 16.1 million liters in 2011 to 14.2 million liters in 2017 (U.S.-based Wine Institute numbers). A tariff is hardly the only or biggest issue facing U.S. wines in China. (More on this soon.)
Frankly, a more likely threat to U.S. wines than a rise in price is a rise in nationalism, one that would see Chinese consumers boycott or be cautious about publicly buying them. Also crucial is the current feeling of economic uncertainty among many consumers, ones that could see them buying not only less U.S. wine but also less wine in general, and that would be something of concern to all who sell in China.
By Jim Boyce | Fake, fun, odd and old. I just launched a page focused on curious wine labels spotted in China. Most of the photos were taken by me, with the rest mostly from friends or wine groups. To kick off the launch, I posted one label per hour, for 24 hours, on my Twitter account. Check them out below. And check out the most than 100 labels, including some pithy comments, by my standards, at this link.
A sparkler is haunting China. This bubbly, inspired by the author of The Communist Manifesto, was spotted in Beijing. Class-y.
“We can call this ‘Penfold’s Grunge’ or ‘Benfold’s Grange’.” “The second one. Penfold’s is a protected name.”
A sweet, er, screw up. “Sweet fuck” might not exist on the “aroma wheel†but the translator didn’t shy from using it for this Alice White from Australia.
There is no “i’ in Lafute. Bordeaux for team players.
Beer or wine? Can’t decide? Changyu was doing boozy mashups nearly a century ago in Shandong.
What does Foreign Girl taste like? Strawberries, says one friend. Also of note, this wine “moistens the lung.”
Basketball and booze: two wildly popular hobbies are tapped by Australian brand Wolf Blass. Spotted at a Beijing supermarket.
A white wine from Romanee-Conti. Made in southern France. By Lafite. Something seems off. Ah, no accent aigu on the first “e†in “Romaneeâ€! (Hat tip: Bruno Paumard)
Some wines are good. Some are very good. But only a few are very very good. (Hat tip: Helene Ponty)
“Has aged well. Prune and faint tobacco aromas, with a whiff of spent youth. The body is a touch flabby but still shows signs of complexity, with a wrinkle of dried fruit and a finish that strongly disapproves of today’s generation.”
“Let’s commemorate tea time with 240 bottles of wine featuring our mugs!” Vanity label from Changyu.
When it comes to fake wine in China, it ain’t only foreign brands that get burned. This Great Vale is but one example.
Did they finally update the 1855 classification system?
This Red Camel by Hansen in Inner Mongolia entered the market at nearly USD600. Why? Because that price was guaranteed to get it media attention
Named for Li Hua, who graduated from University of Bordeaux in the mid-eighties and returned to China to become something of a wine legend.
E-mail Dry Red Wine from Great Wall. From an era that might so easily have produced LOL, Hacker and Pwn wine. Hate it? Click delete. Love it. Forward to friends. Pair with spam.
Leigh Causby! Not much is known about him but he continues to be an oft-used face for China’s biggest wine company, Changyu.
“What should we put on this label instead of Romanee?” “I don’t know.” “C’mon, what sounds sexy?” “Guangdong?”
A Grape Wall April Fool’s Day joke some took seriously. Chateau Lafight blended two legends—French wine and Chinese martial arts—for a wine described as a ‘durian fist in a stinky tofu glove’.
What’s that? A Chinese Riesling from 1931. More proof that assumptions about this country and a destiny with red wine need rethinking.
Nothing quite says colony handover like a commemorative bottle of wine, especially by a brand called Dynasty.
“Life is free” in Shunyi? Certainly not the one in Beijing. Seen at a Fuzhou wine fair.
“Hey, when you said you were taking me to the Loire Valley for our honeymoon…”
School’s over, kids. Let’s get drunk. The new China wine label page is right here.
By Jim Boyce | Two huge alcohol brands are partnering in China—Australian producer Treasury Wine Estates and local baijiu giant Luzhuo Laojiao. Luzhou Laojiao will exclusively distribute TWE brands like Saltram and Penfolds Bin 138 as well as get the majority quota for China of Penfolds flagship wine Grange, according to this report from Yicai Global.
TWE hopes that it can see a surging sales growth in the Chinese market by taking advantages of Luzhou Laojiao’s high-end marketing channels, Peter Dixon, the Melbourne-based wine maker’s general manager for Asia, Middle East, Africa and Global Travel Retail, told Yicai Global.
Chinese consumers face a dizzying wine landscape of tens of thousands of brands handled by thousands of distributors, many of them small, regional and inexperienced. What Luzhou Laojiao offers TWE is one of China alcohol’s top brand names, a vast distribution network, and massive marketing and promotion clout.
I’m not sure if TWE also seeks “a new chapter in the integration of Eastern and Western cultures,” as Luzhou Laojiao chairman Zhang Liang was quoted as saying by Yunjiu Media, but it no doubt hopes to leverage a trusted brand, especially given recent cases of fake wine and other intellectual property issues facing its Penfolds label.
This month, police “busted two fake Penfolds workshops and six wine storage facilities with over 8,000 fake Penfolds valued at RMB 5 million” in Liaoning province, as reported in Drinks Business. This came on the heels of Wine Australiasuspending exports of wine brand Daleford, with labels that evoke Penfolds, in part because “Daleford Wines has engaged in activity that aims to leverage from the reputation of another wine brand in China.”
A group of experts just tried a dozen wines against spicy shredded pig’s ear to pick the best pairing. They’ve already done this dance with steamed fish and with sweet and sour pork. Now two members—veterans from France and Portugal—claim they have the match of the day for that crunchy porcine auditory organ. Wine number 3. They respectively give it 95 and 98 out of 100 points.
Group chair Natasha Hughes, a Master of Wine who (jokingly?) declared that the next person to interrupt her must run three laps around the swimming pool, rains on their parade. Hughes finds the wine dirty and the pairing unsatisfactory.
Uh oh.
This showdown happened at the International Wine & Cuisine Pairing Competition in Beijing’s Fangshan district, organized by S-China Capital with support from Wine 100 and Beijing International Wine and Spirit Exchange. You might wonder why anyone should care about a bunch of experts tasting a bunch of wines against a pig’s ear, a situation few if any consumers will ever face.
I empathize. Such exercises seem overly ambitious given the vast universe of grape varieties, wine brands and vintages. And somewhat irrelevant as the same food and wine can vary dish to dish and bottle to bottle. And it doesn’t help that the trade often sucks more than an air-operated double-diaphragm pump at explaining pairing to those beyond their circles.
But if you have a passion for anything, whether cricket, cameras, cooking or comic book collecting, you might imagine how a wine fan gets excited about what Bordeaux goes best with braised pork belly.
Pairing makes intuitive sense as I tell friends who pooh-pooh the practice but will argue endlessly about the best gin for a martini, the ideal burger toppings or the legitimacy of pineapple on pizza.
At popular hot pot restaurant Haidilao, my friends painstakingly blend dipping sauces from a condiment buffet with dozens of options: spicy chili oil, salty soy sauce, the sweet and sour touches of sugars and vinegars, and more. They are creating the equal of a wine, a magical concoction to match all that emerges from the bubbling broth. So it makes sense some wines will match that broth and those sauces better than others, no?
Anyway, back to table five.
Hughes calls over Andrew Caillard—Australian, fellow Master of Wine, and event co-chair. He tries the wine and declares it faulty. Perhaps in some European events it might get 16 or 16.5 points out of 20, he says dismissively. But in Australia, where screw tops dominate and corks are a minority, it would be a 13.
That sounds harsh to this novice of wine and pig ear pairing.
As Hughes and Caillard discuss the wine further, I ask the French and Portuguese delegates if they plan to change their scores. No way.
I recall our instructions at the start of the day.
“It’s all about the match, not about the wine or the food, it’s about the match,” said Caillard.
Given this, I like the continental European case. The wine and food do pair well, the wine faultiness debatable. Does it matter?
“The panel chair makes the final decision,” Caillard also explained to us earlier. “It’s the final decision, whether you like it or not.”
And so it goes.
To be fair, this was an extreme case. There tended to be more agreement than not with other pairings. But it underscores that even experts can disagree—widely. Two experts gave a pairing of 95 or more points, a score supposed to mean “you’d turn around to someone and say, “If you’re eating this dish, you must find this wine.” Two others found it gross.
That doesn’t make pairing irrelevant, just more complicated in a world where many want simple definitive answers. My advice: consider expert recommendations as just one item in a buffet of opinions, along with tips from friends, suggestions from writers, your own food and drink experience, and more. And if that’s too much, just enjoy the foods you like and the wines you like, and ignore that buffet altogether.
By Jim Boyce | Changyu-Moser XV opened its stunning Loire-esque facility in Ningxia five years ago today. The project pairs Changyu, China’s oldest and biggest producer, with Lenz Moser, who hails from a veteran Austrian wine family. It is sibling to similar huge Changyu wineries in Hebei, Liaoning, Shaanxi, Shandong and Xinjiang. Below I’ve posted photos from five different visits, including on opening day, which featured a musical ensemble, toasts of “ganbei” (bottoms up), fireworks, and tours of the cellar, museum, tasting room and more.
In terms of top local wines, I don’t often hear Changyu-Moser XV spoken in the same breath just yet as the likes of Silver Heights, Grace Vineyard and Ao Yun, but its global effort, led by Moser, has resulted in ample media coverage worldwide and the wines being stocked in England, Germany, the US and the UAR, among other places. And, as I learned during a visit in May, there is plenty of ambition in the pipeline. I hope to post about that very soon.
For now, here are 60 photos, one for each month of Changyu-Moser XV’s history.
2018
My most recent visit came in May when I joined a Changyu-organized tour with writers from Germany, Switzerland and England. Deputy GM Fan Xi and Lenz Moser, shown above checking the “terroir”, led a tour of the winery, cellar, museum and more, then we tried the entire CMXV portfolio in the spacious tasting room, where each person gets their own sink! (I’ll have more on these wine soon.) Moser also took our group on visits to other Ningxia wineries to show what the region as a whole has to offer.
Lay of the land
To the winery
Spring leaves
The winery
Ningxia’s wine regions
Portfolio tasting
Mao on Changyu
Registration papers
The bottling room
Vanity labels
Power-ful neighbors
Moser XV wines
2016
I joined about 50 sommeliers from across China on a Ningxia winery tour that included Changyu-Moser XV. Lots of interest in the museum, which includes background on Changyu, old wine labels and ads, a “sniff and guess” kiosk, photos of famous people who have tried the wine, a giant interactive tongue to explain flavors, and more. The tasting part involved a 25 ml pour of one wine and minimal info, a little disappointing given the crowd, but about par for Ningxia wine tourism.
2015
The early arrivals for the Ningxia Winemakers Challenge II, an event I helped organized, enjoyed a tour with Moser. That included videos about the winery’s history, show in the main building’s screening room, and a highly entertaining animated flick about how wine is made, shown in the winery itself. It also included two of Changyu’s Ningxia wines and a tasty ice wine from the northeast operation in Liaoning.
Welcome to CMXV
Winemakers visit
Moser leads the tour
Changyu’s history
Cellar visit
Private dining area
1915 honors
Cabernet Gernischt
Super-sized bottles
Under the vines
How to make wine
Tank room
Retail shop
Winery mascots
Vanity bottles
Changyu-Moser wines
2014
I helped organize a Ningxia visit by winemakers from Bordeaux, Mendoza, Napa and Stellenbosch, and Changyu Moser was among the ten wineries on the itinerary. We learned about Chang Bishi, who founded Changyu in 1892, and Balboa, an Austrian who consulted and helped secure vines his homeland. I especially liked the display of Qing Dynasty-era clothing Chang is said to have worn.
Sunny Ningxia
Grand entrance
Chang Bishi
Consultant Balboa
Tasting time
Qing-era clothing
Sniff and guess
Old labels
Wedding photos
Wine tourists
Taking the tour
Moser Family wine
2013
Opening day at Changyu-Moser! The event included hundreds of Changyu distributors and other employees from across the country as well as local officials and members of the wine trade. The band mostly stuck to standards like “Amazing Grace” but I’m pretty sure I heard them sneak in some Bruno Mars. See my write-up here.
By Jim Boyce | Six years, sixty cities, thousands of ganbeis and a master’s degree worth of lessons. When it comes to planting a family wine brand in China, no one has the green thumb of Helene Ponty.
Ponty moved to Beijing in 2012, after diplomas in business at MIT and business law at Poitiers, and has since traversed the nation selling her family’s wine from Canon-Fronsac in Bordeaux.
We did a Q&A this week and, because she missed World Baijiu Day, an event I help organize, we also tasted a handful of spirits. See the China insights, baijiu notes, revelations and regrets below.
Destination Heihe
Boyce: Your most recent trip was to Heihe. Where is it? What was it like?
Ponty: Heihe means Black River and the buildings you see on the opposite bank are in Russia. My client said the population is 100,000, so I call it the northernmost city in China, although there is a village called Mohe even further north.
What was it like? I went two years ago for the first time. There were tons of Russian people coming to buy cheap Chinese stuff. But this time I saw a lot of Russian products being sold to people in Heihe due to currency changes.
How did you end up in Heihe?
I met my client at a trade fair in Harbin in 2015. He had a store in Heihe, a pretty nice one, and he did well and upgraded it. His portfolio includes my wine, tons of cheap French wine, fake Lafite, and Penfolds. He sells 700 bottles of my stuff per year.
Lots of consumers show up, buy wine and go to restaurants, and he sells directly to restaurants, too. He also sells baijiu and beer. Wine is the smallest part of his business. He has maps of each city district with their performance. He took me to a Michael Jackson-themed restaurant when I visited.
That’s just one of many cities where you are active.
We have 60 distributors and most are in different cities. The only places we are not represented are Tibet, Gansu, Ningxia and Qinghai.
And you met your Heihe client at a wine trade fair?
The Harbin wine fair. I was the only foreigner there.
I don’t do big fairs like Prowine [in Shanghai] or Topwin [in Beijing]. Prowine is 4,000 Euros [31,000 RMB] to get a booth for three days and I have no idea who I am going to meet. I went once and mostly met Chinese students learning about wine.
If I go to a local wine fair, I spend 5,000 RMB for three days and my success rate for finding a local distributor is 100 percent. If I don’t have a distributor in Wuhan, I go to the Wuhan Wine Fair (above) to find one.
Some of these fairs are not professional. Sometimes there is no ice or people smoke or people spit on the floor near my booth. At one fair in Hebei, I really felt sick after three days because the smoke was so thick. But I can find distributors. I sometimes send my team and they still make the connections.
Baijiu 1: Erguotou is a much-loved baijiu style in Beijing and Yidanliang and inexpensive option. Ponty’s evaluation: “Marinated fruit. It’s very sweet and a bit sour. It’s like a tart candy in France called Arlequin.”
Online Sales, Offline Ganbei
Boyce: How do smaller cities like Heihe compare to so-called tier-one places like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, especially as online retail makes wine more accessible?
Ponty: We are mostly in smaller cities and in traditional channels. Online retail has not really changed things so much for us. Some of our clients see a threat from the prices, but a lot of people like buying from someone they know, and our clients get customers through introductions from other customers.
How about your own experience, with the WeChat store you launched?
Our online store is more of an experiment. Why did we do it? Because we were only wholesale and I got a bit frustrated with our distributors late last year. I feel the market is changing and they are not responding.
[For distributors] it’s not just about relationships anymore, about a few key companies where you know the purchasing guy and there is no discussion of prices. Those companies are more careful now. You have to sell to normal consumers, and they want to know about the wine and why it’s good. You have to sell the wine, not just make friends.
How did that view go over?
Their attitude was that I’m a foreigner; that I don’t understand China. I was frustrated and decided to target Beijing with an online store and do things how we think they should be done. So far it’s pretty good. Not a huge number of consumers but they return. It’s teaching us how to do e-commerce and reach younger consumers, to see what kids [aged 25 to 40] are looking for in Beijing.
Does that age group have buying power?
Yes, lots of consumers aged 25 to 35 have money.
I also did this for my mental health. I love doing events for them. They’re curious, they like wine and they ask great questions.
Our last event (above) was a launch for our new sweet white wine Vent des Cimes. Since we have never done a sweet white wine before, we wanted to understand how people like to drink it, and let people experience food pairings. We created three food stations around major flavors — ”salty, sweet and spicy — ”with a mix of classic French food, like blue cheese, and classic Chinese food, mostly Sichuanese.
It’s different from an event in [a city like] Hefei where it’s just about downing wine. I have a good time there, and people are super nice, but [people at the Beijing events] care about the wine and story and what we are trying to do. These events are good preparation: if they are happening in Beijing and Shanghai, they will eventually come to other cities.
Speaking of downing wine, what percent of Ponty wine that you drink is sipped rather than ganbei’d?
Ninety-five percent is ganbei, with some differences. The ganbei might be to fill a glass a little or you might not have to drink it all. Where things go wrong is when you have to down a full glass — and I do it.
The most important thing is that [people at dinners] don’t care at all about sipping or talking about the wine style, like the aroma or flavor. They want to know if it tastes good; if they like it. They might say it’s lighter or stronger, but they don’t talk about the specific characteristics.
I usually explain a little about wine culture in France, but they are not interested, because in China you drink to get drunk, and if you are drunk it means you are happy. If you are at a dinner and not doing that, it means you are not having a good time. I have no problem with that.
Also, if you are drunk, you have nothing to hide, you are a good business partner. People are not interested in changing that. If you drink wine in a different way, it is seen as not very friendly.
And that’s very different from France.
When they come to France, they start to toast and ganbei my parents. I tell them we don’t do it like that. They realize the way we eat in France is more formal but the way we drink is less formal, the opposite of China. They end up drinking a lot less because they are drinking what they want.
Baijiu 2: Shanxi’s sorghum-based Fenjiu ranks among China’s top brands. Says Ponty: “Earthy, rich but balanced, warming. Something you could sit by the fire and sip.”
Red vs White
The wine trade outside China is convinced consumers here are addicted to red wine but your experiences suggest otherwise, right?
When we do consumer events, our whites are super popular. The problem is the distributors. A few years ago, some of the guys were saying they won’t drink white wine because it’s only for women. Now they don’t say that so much, now the issue is they don’t know much about white wine.
They don’t know how to prepare or serve them. They don’t have it chilled for delivery, or even know to do that, and before every tasting, I have to check to see if the white wines are chilled. They can just open red wine but white wine is a much more troublesome product for them.
I always tell them in France, it’s seafood with white wine. It’s the most logical advice I can give, even though I know some fish sauces in China might work with red. I just want to create a way for them to understand white wine.
You say consumers love the white wines at tastings. Does that translate into sales?
From our WeChat and Financial Times stores, I think white wines are the best seller, although we have only had the FT store two months and those numbers might be influenced by the summer.
I think it’s harder for people to find a good white wine so, if they do, they keep buying it. And our white wine is good for Chinese consumers. It’s not too dry, with a little residual sugar, and fruity, fresh and round.
And now you have introduced a sweet white Semillon. Why do that now and who is target?
We want to keep growing and need to add to our portfolio. Two years ago, I asked our customers if they wanted a rose, sparkling or sweet wine. Our customers in China overwhelmingly said sweet wine. If not for them, we probably would have done a rose.
When we do a new wine, we want to do something better than what’s available. For cheaper Bordeaux, there is so much crap. We added an entry-level Bordeaux (above) last year because we thought we could do better.
It’s the same with sweet wine (above). Even in Bordeaux, we are not that happy with the local wines. They are too sweet and not fresh.
I wanted a sweet wine with lots of freshness that people can drink throughout the night. A big target is smaller cities. Our distributors are mainly 35- to 55-year-old Chinese guys who have their own company or a job where they have to entertain a lot. Often their wives come to dinners and don’t drink baijiu and maybe not red wine. But they love sweet white wine. Ladies in smaller cities who don’t drink a lot, and even say they are allergic to alcohol, like this wine.
There are also often people in the younger crowd that drink wine, who like sweet wine.
Baijiu 3: Yimuquan is a mixed-aroma baijiu from Baoding, just outside Beijing. Says Ponty: “Fresh, especially after the richness of fenjiu. A little sharper, a little floral. Maybe good with some spicy food.”
Individuality and Exclusivity
Boyce: France is the top source of imported wine here and Bordeaux the most biggest part of that, but it’s a crazy space, with pricey elite labels at one end and super cheap aspirational ones at the other. With the sheer number of brands, and the many fakes, where does your small Bordeaux winery fit?
Ponty: Our wine is on one client’s shelf next to a Bordeaux brand called Wenke Lafei. They think if it says Lafei, it’s Lafite, and I have to explain that’s just a Chinese name. They were selling it for more than my wine. What can we do? We try hard to explain the situation but they put the stuff on the shelf because they don’t know better.
I give our clients a few key messages about our brand. I explain how it is hand-crafted, how we harvest by hand, how my father does everything in the cellar based on experience. People like that.
Another thing is our relationship with distributors. They can work directly with us and we do all the branding. They know if they work with me, they can send me photos of a wine or bottle, and ask if I think it is good or fake. They trust me. We are present in China and they can use that support. Almost no one else is doing this.
Distributors love exclusivity as it provides flexibility for pricing. How do you handle it?
We give exclusivity by city or province. This is so important because most clients are completely paranoid about other people selling our wine in the same city.
We had a guy in one city who bought from us once and wanted exclusivity. I told him what he needed to reach targets and he said he couldn’t do it, but he still wanted exclusivity, with no targets and with penalties if we used other distributors. He became very unhappy because I told other people our prices and he felt that was unfair. It’s a very Chinese point of view. He wants exclusivity but he can’t meet the targets. I want to see growth.
In general, we give exclusivity to most distributors but sometimes I have to say, you have a city of 10 million people, I am pretty sure it can handle more than one distributor. If your service is good, people will stick with you. The problem is many distributors don’t have good service.
Baijiu 4: Jiangxianghe is a strong aroma baijiu from Anhui. Says Ponty: You know in wine when they say the attack is strong? The attack is strong. It’s like a mustard that’s too… mustard-y.”
Regrets, Benefits, More
Boyce: OK, I’m feeling this baijiu. Let’s finish with a power round. Short questions, short answers. Number one: your biggest regret about doing the wine business in China?
Ponty: Biggest regret? The toll on my health. I’ve had pneumonia and three bacterial infections from the food. I’m pretty sure my lungs are not happy. Plus, my liver.
Most unexpected benefit?
Getting compliments all the time. It’s a huge boost to the ego. Not only do people tell me I’m beautiful but my nose comes up all the time. Everywhere I go, I get compliments on my nose. I have an awesome nose? I had no idea!
Best Chinese food and Ponty wine pairing?
Our Pavilion and roast lamb with a little bit of cumin.
Is Chinese getting as good as French, yes or no?
No.
Care to elaborate?
It might someday but we’ve been making wine for thousands of years. It’s not going to happen here in 20 years.
Favorite smaller city where you’ve done business?
Xiamen. The air is pretty good, the climate is nice, it’s close to the water and gets a breeze, and the seafood is great. It’s not too big and the airport is close, so it’s easy to get in and out. Also, they drink a ton of wine (above) but also care.
And least favorite?
Changsha. It’s very gray and polluted, The city is cold and not pretty and the drinking culture is intense. But the Hunan countryside is pretty
Speaking of intense, how many bottles of wine can you drink?
I always get that question! What does it mean? While drinking quickly? Slowly? Over the course of a day? With food? No food?
After six years, your overall take on the scene?
I’m still not finding anything exciting to drink from the wine trade in general. You go to France and they have cool wineries doing great stuff, and Australia, too, but you don’t find that in China. It’s all the standard stuff.
Name a restaurant you can go to and say, “That’s a nice wine list, there is so much to drink, I don’t know what to order.” Or a wine shop where you can say “that’s cool stuff.”
I have some clients now who care and are getting some wine like that but most of it is, been there, done that, had it before.
Baijiu 5: Taizi from New Zealand. Ponty: Says Ponty: “This is 58% alcohol but it’s more integrated, it’s smoother and richer.”
Get more info about Ponty at the winery’s website here or on WeChat with the id PontyWinery. This Q&A was done at Q Bar.
By Jim Boyce | Is Treasury Wine Estates following this blog!? Or a higher-up at Penfolds? Maybe Peter Gago? Because a new wine-baijiu blend called ‘waijiu‘ was our April Fool’s joke this spring and now Penfolds has announced it will release a product that combines wine and baijiu for the China market this fall.
Coincidence? You decide!
Along with announcing it will add a wine sourced from California, Penfolds also released info on some “special bottlings”, including one that involves China’s national spirit, baijiu:
“Lot. 518 is a Spirited Wine – a premium fortified Barossa Shiraz (94%) enlivened with Baijiu; scheduled for release in September 2018.”
According to Bloomberg, the alcohol level of the new product will be 21.5 percent, less than half of many baijius. It also quoted Penfolds chief winemaker [and baijiu aficionado] Peter Gago as saying “This will broaden our base and help future-proof Penfolds.”
Australia is second-biggest source of imported bottled wine in China and has steadily been catching up on leader France for years.
But for all the media coverage of grape wine in China, including of the country’s own increasingly good local brands, it still only holds a small fraction of the market share of baijiu. So maybe Penfolds is onto something here.
By the way, I co-organize World Baijiu Day, which involved events in dozens of cities each August 9. Check it out here.
Jim Boyce | Grace Vineyard has gone public. In terms of being listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, that is. Its status is official under the name Grace Wine Holdings, a little more than two decades after it got into the grape game in Shanxi province. (See 20 Years, 20 Questions for my anniversary Q&A with CEO Judy Chan.)
“Grace Wine saw its retail tranche oversubscribed 127 times, and the final IPO price was determined at 35 HK cents a share.”
“The mainland-based winemaker has got HK$40.6 million from the public offering, and its shares rose 15 percent in the grey market yesterday.”
Grace Vineyard, known as Yi Yuan in Chinese, is often cited as the biggest wine success story in China, to the point it could be called the Yao Ming of the wine scene.
Over the past few years, Grace has kept its edge by building a presence in Ningxia, which has emerged as China’s most promising wine region, and boosting its portfolio with creative additions, including a series of sparkling wines and a reserve line that utilizes grapes rarely seen in China, including Aglianico. Grace has also boosted its retail presence, including on platforms such as jd.com and Tmall. In late 2016, it partnered with Suntory-owned importer and distributor ASC, thus ending a 12-year relationship with Torres China, which helped bring the Grace brand to prominence.
According to a Hong Kong Stock Exchange document posted on its site, Grace will use nearly half of the HKD40.6 million raised for building the second phase of its Ningxia winery. About 20 percent each will go to plants and equipment for that phase and to production costs at the first phase. The rest is earmarked for sales and marketing and general capital.
Executive directors of Grace Wine Holdings are Judy Chan and Fan Chi Chiu. The non-executive directions are Hou Tantan and Chow Christer Ho while the independent non-executive directors are Ho (Kent) Ching-tak, Lim (Edwin) Leung Yau and Alec Peter Tracy.
Senior management includes GM Wei Dong Sheng and production manager Lee Yean Yean.
