Let's talk about how to do wine business in China.

Today, I’m not gonna talk about wine tasting techniques in general, but to give you some ideas about how to do business in Chinese wine market. When I mention about Chinese wine market, I know some of you still believe Chinese people are sort of mixing Petrus with Coca cola. Yeah that was what they’ve done. But whether you like it or not, now China ranks as 5^th biggest wine importing country in the world with an annual growth of 30% in value. For most wine professionals, flying to Shanghai or Hong Kong is just like flying to New York or London. We even had an insight joke: The wine professionals are either in China or on their way to China. Here I’m going to give you the very general picture (based on my personal experience in China) about how to develop your business in China step by step.

When you are selling wine in China, firstly please understand why Chinese consumers drink wine, because wine is definitely not a daily drink in China. But 90% of consumers are drinking wines during special occasions. For example during holidays or parties, 94% of consumers drink wine because they believe that it is better to health compare with Chinese “Bai Jiu”. Therefore, a wine in China is considered as a healthy and social drink. In this case, those methods you are using to target European consumers would not work in China. Because they don’t care about grape variety, US oak or French oak, biodynamic or organic, they just don’t care. Simply just be social and be healthy, and give them a story to talk about during dinner and that’s it.

Who are you selling to? Not everyone in China could afford wines, because they are extremely expensive. Don’t be surprised to find a vin de pays Merlot sold at 40 euros in China, as our average salary is only 300 euros per month. Some of you may have started doing marketing research, customer surveys or segmentations or lifestyle analysis. But they are way too complicated. We say that in China there are only two kinds of consumers: Consumers who pay their bills and consumers who don’t pay their bills. For consumers who don’t pay their bills, 99% are government officials and politicians. They don’t care about taste, all they pursue is price and reputation. If you are a premium wine producer, please spell out your rarity, your heritage and your exclusiveness. And be simple, please do not tell boring history, even for wine professionals these histories are just boring. All your need to do is storytelling; give them a premium story to talk during dinner, and make sure your wine would be a good sample to contribute their self-esteem. 

But for the people who really pay their bills, they are the so-called ordinary consumers. In order to reach them you need to ask yourself a question: where do you sell your wine? More precisely, are you gonna sell on trade or off trade? The Chinese wine report said that the on trade sales and off trade sales are almost equal. That made me quite surprised when I first read it. Because I said that most wines are considered as social drinks instead of drinking alone. But why the on trade sales and off trade sales can be equal? Please don’t forget about holiday sales, because 60% of wine sale in China are generated only during two holidays: The mid-autumn day and spring festival. Well, some consumers like you and me may only buy one or two bottles to give them to friends as gifts, but the government and companies also need to give gifts to their partners and their employees etc. In this case, a bottle of wine which is healthy and fashionable, will definitely be the top of the list. And by the way, they are purchasing wine on a very large volume, actually they are the key players to drive off trade sales up high. So when you are planning to ship your containers to China, please make sure they are gonna be on those shelves before holidays.

Finally, hope this article may help you and thanks for reading.