Here’s a story to make a wine lover shiver:

When a friend complimented Niagara winemaker Allan Schmidt for successfully cracking the icewine market in mainland China, Schmidt dismissed it: He wasn’t selling his wine in China, he said.

But the friend persisted. He said he was sure he’d seen Schmidt’s Vineland Estates icewine for sale there.

“Again, I told him: ‘No, you must be mistaken,'” Schmidt recalls.

Then the friend gave him a link to a website.

Schmidt was stunned.

There, a Chinese company was selling a product called Vineland icewine, boasting of a joint venture with a Canadian partner and, to top it all off, using a panoramic view of Schmidt’s own winery on its Web page.

The story, reported in The Toronto Star, underscores the chilly situation in China for icewine producers. Schmidt discovered the fakes four years ago, has poured through sixty grand of legal fees, and still hasn’t gotten justice.

You would think that since icewine has a good and growing reputation in China, sales would be up. Instead, the article states, “Sales of Canadian icewine in China have plummeted 60 per cent from highs earlier in the decade.”

Exacerbating the problem, besides poor enforcement of the law against counterfeits, is that a consumer who has never tried icewine before won’t know fake from real. And many of the fakes look good, with labels featuring French and English information, maple leaves, and even photos of Niagara Falls.

Here’s a perspective from Chinese consumers, a small sample size of one, my colleague: “I went to a shopping mall [in east Beijing] and I saw ice wine. All the bottles looked the same and had the same year, but there were four or five different prices. I asked the seller what the difference is among them. She told me the cheapest ones are made from wine imported in bulk from Canada and bottled in China, the expensive one is bottled in Canada. I believed it!”

I highly doubt there was any Canadian content in any of those bottles…

In any case, the article reports a glimmer of hope: “China’s vice-director of wine quality supervision and inspection, Ma Peixua, told the Star last week that a new national standard for icewine will be implemented Jan. 1.”

Note: I’m still finishing my notes from the August 9 lectures at Beijing’s wine workshop (see the first three posts: China Wine 101, Shop ‘Til You Pop and Taste, with Chinese characteristics). I hope to have them up with a week.

China Radio International interviewed me earlier this year about – acquaintances in the wine sector gasp with horror! – wine. That’s right: Beijing Boyce, owner of a level-one Wine Spirits and Education Trust certificate, able to differentiate Champagne from Cabernet Sauvignon, and collector of corks (they make great mobiles!) dispensed wine wisdom to the masses. I thought it prudent to burst onto the national scene by making a revolutionary statement or three:

•  Red wines match red foods, such as kimchi, watermelon and cherry Popsicles; white wines match white foods, such as Spanish onions, rice cakes and plain yoghurt; rose wines match pink foods, such as candy floss and Double Bubble gum;
• Never, ever, ever add 7-Up or Sprite to wine – unless you have given the soda a proper chance to breathe.
• Always eat the cork when drinking an “oaked” wine, as the two woods bring out each other’s flavors.

Of course, I’m kidding – except about the cherry Popsicles. The interview, with ‘Dapper Dude’ Mark Rybchuk was about “basics,” the kind of things one might learn in a WSET course or from Wine for Dummies. These include:

– Use proper-sized glasses that allow you to swirl the wine, hold its aromas,  and get a good smell.
– Serve wine at an appropriate tempature: whites should be about 10-12 degrees and reds around 16.
– The queen of wines is Chardonnay, the king is Cabernet Sauvignon – pay homage to them, and then move on.
– Tannin makes your mouth feel dry in the same way that strong black tea does, while acidity makes your mouth water (to be on the safe side, always wear a bib).
– Trash-talking Chinese wine because you had a bad experience with 28-kuai Great Wall or Dynasty is kind of like hating all American and European beers because you don’t like Budweiser and Carlsberg. Local wineries that use only Chinese grapes, such as Grace and Catai, deserve a chance.

By the way, we did this interview while I sipped Jack Daniels and Mark had a Qingdao at Shooters. What can I say, our original wine-relevant location was closed.

(This post previously appeared on www.beijingboyce.com.)

I attended seven lectures and tasted 14 local wines on August 9, the second day of the International Workshop on the Wine Market in China, held in Beijing. I’ll post notes all week.

Here’s a shocker: Chinese people drink wine to get drunk.

That statement might trigger eye rolls from more than a few people who see it as stating the obvious, but in a world where pairing wine and food gains growing popularity it can be easy to “miss the bunch for the grapes”, and this was a point made by wine educator and writer Frankie Zhao, who discussed the Chinese palate.

Zhao started by noting the diversity of Chinese cuisine, which tends toward salty in the north, spicy in the southwest, fresh and light in the southeast, and so on. “Chinese have a very delicate and complex palate,” he said, noting that at meals many dishes are simultaneously served and naturally balance one another, no help from wine needed.

Thus, wine is enjoyed not in terms of food but how quickly it gets into the bloodstream. As Zhao notes, “Chinese tend to drink voluminously and quickly.”

Zhao noted wine preferences among Chinese drinkers: beginners prefer sweet, the more experienced like tannic and some women prefer “sour”. Oak flavors are not easily detected by Chinese. He added that most drinkers prefer fruity wine, those who enjoy strong-flavored food like spicy ones, and only the experienced can detect earthiness in wine.

In terms of purchases, Zhao said the ratio of red to white wine is nine to one, only a few brands are influential (see Petrus and Lafite), and most consumers can only remember five brands (no surprise, they find Chinese names easier to remember). Finally, he noted the perceived health connection, especially among older buyers, with red wine.

To finish by returning to the start, what if you really want to pair wine and Chinese food? Zhao provided several ideas:

• Pick a wine that pairs with the majority of dishes (hopefully 80 to 90 percent).
• Have two or three wines with the dinner.
• Rather than bring out all the dishes at once, stagger and match them to wine.

It sounds like a great deal of research is still needed on this topic and I’m sure volunteers will be easy to find.

Coming next: Wine Workshop IV—Cash, Carry and Cabernet in China (I’ll try to have this one out by Friday)

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I attended seven lectures and tasted fourteen local wines on August 9, the second day of the International Workshop on the Wine Market in China, held in Beijing. I’ll post notes all week.

Getting wine to China is one thing, getting consumers to pull the cork on a purchase is quite another. Huiqin Ma, associate professor at China Agricultural University and the workshop organizer, reported on a wine survey done with Ying Yu of 230 consumers in Beijing supermarkets. The sample group included 110 men and 120 women, most of whom fell predominantly between the ages of 18 and 40 (~94%) and had an income of less than 5,000 RMB (USD700) per month (~90%).

Ma discussed purchasing blocks, influences on wine buyers, and so on. My shorthand is, er, short on practice, so here are just a few of her points:

• The biggest influencers on consumers are, in order of importance, the brand name (“it’s like an index for selection,” says Ma), origin of the wine (“that means the country [not region] of origin”, she says), whether they’d previously tasted the wine, and recommendations.
• Least influential were whether it paired with food, an attractive label, and alcohol content below 13 percent.
• When Chinese students taking a wine course at the university were surveyed, food pairing and the information on the bottle’s back label rose in terms of influence, suggesting the impact of wine education.
• About 85 percent of consumers sometimes or always read the back label. The information they want, in order of importance, is a description of the aroma and taste, food pairing advice, an introduction to the winemaking process, and background /history on the wine or producer.
• In terms of medals listed on labels, 25 percent of consumers do not trust them on Chinese bottles as compared to 5 percent on international ones, while 25 percent do trust them on Chinese bottles as compared to 42 percent on international (about 50 percent said they don’t know).

Ma’s key findings include:

• Supermarkets are the top wine venue, scoring high on price and convenience
• Wine shops lag behind, though they score high on service and diversity of choice
• The Internet scores lowest except on price, where it ranks behind supermarkets and ahead of wine shops

She also said Chinese prefer Chinese wine, mainly due to availability, and have a good impression of French wine, which is positioned well in terms of business dinners and leads in terms of gift-giving. Australian wine, especially Shiraz, also places well due to marketing and word of mouth. Countries such as Chile, Argentina and South Africa have lower profiles and their wines are not normally purchased as gifts.

There’s a lot more to be said on the Chinese wine consumer, of course, and I’m hoping to sit down with Ma for an in-depth interview in the near future.

Tomorrow: Wine Workshop III: Taste, with Chinese characteristics

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I attended seven lectures and tasted fourteen local wines on August 9, the second day of the International Workshop on the Wine Market in China, held in Beijing. I’ll post notes all week.

The workshop was at China Agricultural University near Beijing’s Fifth Ring Road. It’s the boondocks if you live downtown as I do, but once there—and having dealt with a cab driver who wanted to drop me miles from the school—I saw the wisdom. The smog is lighter, the cicadas buzz, and a lazy day feel permeates the campus. Plus, the Summer Palace, which ranks only behind the Great Wall as a must-see in the area (yes, I rank the Forbidden City third), is nearby in case we — about 25 people gathered from five continents — got out of class early.

No such luck, but it didn’t matter, as the day was full of interesting seminars.

First up was Qi Wang, general secretary of the China Alcoholic Drinks Industry Association. My Mandarin is weak and the translation of Wang’s talk spotty at times, but here are five points gleaned from his printed materials and comments:

(1)
According to the Bureau of Statistics, China produced 4.95 million hectoliters of wine in 2006. The top 10 producing areas (measured in 1000 hectoliters):

2396 – Shandong
1057 – Hebei
0419 – Tianjin
0288 – Jilin
0269 – Henan
0156 – Beijing
0089 – Gansu
0061 – Yunan
0057 – Xinjiang
0055 – Shan’xi

These represent 95.87 percent of production. (Some might be surprised to see Jilin, a northeastern province bordering North Korea and Russia in the top five, and Yunnan, a southwestern province bordering Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar in the top ten. I expected Xinjiang in the northwest to have ranked higher given it has a long, well-known history of growing grapes.)

(2)
A mere 37,000 hectoliters of this wine, or less than 1 percent, was exported in 2006 (up 48.2 percent over 2005). In contrast, 1,147,000 hectoliters was imported (up 151.1 percent over 2005). These numbers have been increasing even faster in 2007.

(3)
There are some 500 wineries in China. The top ten represent just over 62 percent of total production, while the top five take just over 47 percent. Top brands Changyu, Great Wall, Dynasty and Weilong (Dragon Seal) are dominant.

(4) Major Chinese brands continue quick growth and to dominate market share. According to Qi’s notes, these wineries “could make new breakthroughs in vineyard development, further individualizing products and launching high-end products” while smaller wineries aim at “presenting their wine characteristics and catering to the needs of particular consumers.” In other words, don’t expect Chinese companies to stand by as consumer tastes evolve but to instead respond to the market.

(5) New wine regulations will come into effect in January. As examples, Qi said that 80 percent of a wine must come from the vintage year indicated on the bottle, while 75 percent of the wine must be from the grape variety listed. His notes state that to “reinforce the regulations of the wine industry is an urgent matter” and cite issues such as fake vintages and low-quality wines. These have long been issues, whether it’s foreign wine bottled and marketed here as “Chinese”, ambiguities about vintages, or the prevalence of counterfeit goods. (These regulatory issues could have filled a morning all by themselves and I’ll post more about them in the future.)

Tomorrow: Wine workshop II, Shop ’til you pop

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I cashed in some annual leave yesterday to attend the International Workshop on the Wine Market in China, held in Beijing, and it was time well spent.

Insightful lectures on the buying behaviors of local consumers, lessons for foreign winemakers looking to partner with China distributors, and government policies that impact foreign wines were capped with a tasting of 14 Chinese wines from at five (at least) provinces - it was my first chance to try wines from Jilin in the far northeast and Yunnan in the southwest and I think this was an intriguing part of the program as it was the first visit to China for many of the attendees.

I’ll post thoughts on the conference and the wines from next Monday…

Follow Grape Wall on Facebook and Twitter. Support the project here. And sign up for the China wine newsletter below. Also check out sibling sites Beijing Boyce and World Baijiu Day.

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My body has filtered its fair share of wine during the past decade, but it was only a few weeks ago at The Bookworm that I finally attended a Riedel tasting. Riedel makes expensive machine- and hand-made crystal wine glasses in dozens of shapes. The glass for Merlot is different than the glass for Bordeaux, and so on. The idea is that the shape and volume of the glass determines how wine is aerated and where it falls on the tongue, and thus significantly influences how we smell and taste it.

A dozen of us began with a Chardonnay served, as you might guess, in a Riedel Chardonnay glass. A few sniffs and sips later, we poured the wine into one of those small glasses commonly used by restaurants and bars. The effect was striking. The bouquet seemed much weaker and the taste sour, as the smaller glass’ shape directed the wine away from the tip of our tongues, where our sense of sweetness lies. But what if rather than that obviously sub-par small glass we had used a different Riedel one? After trying the Sauvignon Blanc in its special vessel, we did just that, pouring the wine into the now-empty Chardonnay glass. The effect on the bouquet and taste was still evident, though less pronounced. We rounded out our testing with a Pinot Noir and a Cabernet Sauvignon.

1I asked if budget-minded souls could get these results by using a cheap glass with a shape similar to that of the Riedel. The answer was that crystal: 1) makes it easier to check wine clarity and; 2) allows for more aeration, as under a microscope it is rougher than glass. What can I say? No one had a microscope handy. In the end, the tasting was both an education of the senses and sheer marketing genius, for we had plunked down RMB250 each for what was partly a sales pitch. While Riedel is nice, I’m sticking for now with the RMB20 wine glasses I bought at the former Riverside Cafe — they are cheap and big, and since my friends tend to break stuff after a few bottles of wine, I’d hate to have that rough crystal scratching my linoleum floor. For those who do wish to indulge, Riedel is distributed exclusively in China by ASC.

(A version of  this post originally appeared on October 3, 2006 on www.beijingboyce.com.)

Get out your acronym finder as CAU (China Agricultural University), CSV (Chinese Society for Viticulture), CADIA (China Alcoholic Drinks Industry Association) and OIV (International Organization of Vine and Wine) team up for the International Workshop on the Chinese Wine Market and Wine-related Products, August 8 to 10 in Beijing.

Day 1 features a visit to the Huailai wine region’s Great Wall Winery and to the Great Wall itself, followed by a wine dinner.

Day 2 includes seminars on China’s current wine market, on government policies and regulations on imported wines in China, and on market research on Chinese buyers. Attendees will hear about the experiences of a boutique winery (Grace Vineyard) and a retailer (Metro) in China, and about brand positioning. The day will wrap up with a tasting of Chinese wines.

Day 3 includes foreign experts speakers about the wine industry in the US, France and Australia. An afternoon session will focus on the media and wine promotion in China.

The three-dayworkshop, including the wine tastings, dinners and winery tour, is 550 euros. There are more details here, but note that the exact itinerary will likely differ slightly.