When I was FaceTiming with my parents this past weekend, I noticed
one gadget on the dining table that I had never seen before: a decanter. “Wow, are
you guys getting serious about wine drinking now?” I asked half teasingly. My hometown,
Henan Province, is famous for producing traditional Chinese rice liquor (“Baijiu”
and “Huangjiu”), and my parents have always been loyalists for the beverage. On
my previous trips home, my parents would sometimes ask about wine, but I just
assumed that was their kind support about my not-financially-promising
restaurant interest. So I was quite shocked when they said, “Yea! We do wine
tasting after our weekly hiking trips with our buddies now; it’s become so
popular!”
Wine has been rising in popularity in China steadily, but in
the past few years, the thirst for wine has reached a new high. First, wine is
coming off the alter from a luxury drink for the ultra-wealthy, into acceptance
by the rising middle class. Second, people are increasingly aware of the health
effect that regular consumption of high alcohol liquor like Baijiu can have.
Wine, with its 12-15% alcohol content, is increasingly seen as a healthier
alternative. Third, as shown by my parents’ comment, wine drinking is becoming
increasingly socially acceptable and trendy.
My group is doing our midterm project on the western part of
China, in particular Xinjiang Province, as an emerging wine region. Excited to
be learning more about the ins and outs of the wine distribution, regulation,
and important players in China soon.
Querida - fascinating! Thank you for your perspective.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to think about the rise in popularity in wine across the globe. Most notably, I think the comparison here between how the market evolved in China (moving from luxury to the masses) vs. Canada in the case of Inniskillin is especially interesting. In Canada, as the case we read implied, the market started as lower-quality table wine - it was seen much less as luxury. Only when vintners began using more famous - rather than just local - grape varietals did the market start to succeed and shift more towards luxury taste. This resembles how my family has described the evolution of wine in their home country of New Zealand. Local varietals were the predominant ones produced. New Zealand is not close to anywhere, so foreign wine is less prominent. What wine did exist was low quality and was consumed by the masses. Only when vintners began experimenting with European varietals did the luxury wine movement in New Zealand succeed. Now its Sauvignon Blanc reach (grown in Marlborough) is completely global!
While I have less direct familiarity with China's economy, I would guess the change in China's case largely stemmed from the large consumption of imported luxury wine vs. availability of good local wine. As local wine quality has improved (and as local product consumption has been more and more encouraged), this shift to wider appeal has happened. A Wharton article (linked below) really described the Chinese's taste for wine well: "Chinese customers often have enduring 'country-of-origin' biases, and wine follows this pattern. The association between wine and France is particularly strong, with domestic brands mimicking French imagery on packaging and vintage naming conventions."
I also found the report linked below an interesting read in putting this all into context (and it also contains research that will likely be useful background to include in your project).
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Articles Referenced: China Wine Import Report - https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/04/01/1790978/0/en/China-Wine-Import-Report-2013-2018-2019-2023.html
Wharton - Uncorking China's Wine Market - https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/uncorking-chinas-wine-market/
Thanks Querida and Hannah. I am fascinated by your group's decision to focus on Xinjiang as an emerging wine region.
ReplyDeleteI am confident of the growth prospects of the Chinese wine industry. As Hannah and you mentioned already, there is a large market for the beverage and it is becoming increasingly an affordable aspirational product. Production wise, China is the seventh-largest producer of wine globally, and has more acreage devoted to vineyards than any other country besides Spain. There are a dozen or so Chinese wine-growing regions, of which Ningxia is the most significant. Ningxia has around a hundred wineries, spread across a hundred miles, which, in 2016, produced a hundred and twenty million bottles’ worth of wine. It is also interesting that many French wineries set up shop in China, such as Chandon and Lafite.
What I am more interested in is in the beyond market factors that could influence a region from being a 'wine region'. In particular, in the current geopolitical climate that is China, how would a region be able to grow organically without State direction in its wine production? Xinjiang has been in consistently in the Western media for reasons that do not seem to make it very conducive for wine production. I am curious, at a broader context, on how the wine industry's development is closely intertwined and affected by broader socioeconomic and geopolitical developments. Happy for further discussion!
Article referenced: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/can-wine-transform-chinas-countryside