DISQUS

Jeff Bashford · 1 year ago

Thanks for your post, I'm looking forward to part 2. Having been to china, a country I find incredibly interesting, and working in the wine industry I can't wait to watch the wine culture there grow. Its such a huge market and I have no doubt that there is some amazing terrior to be discovered. Little insights like yours continue to convince me that I should be looking for a way to enter the wine industry in China sooner rather than later.

Cheers

Edward · 12 months ago

Thanks, Jeff. I'll have to pen Part 2 soon. So much is going on here that I'm not sure where to start in these posts. So I've lamely opted just to go back to the beginning and try to remember how the wine market has changed here over the last two years. As to that market, it's not yet huge, of course, but potentially sizeable. Domestic wines dominate by volume. Imported wines (in bottle, not bulk imports) lead the way in terms of value (not value to the consumer, alas, but high value worth per bottle for the importers!). I think finding genuinely good places to grow grapes for wine production in China is actually going to be pretty tough; and the climate is adverse in many places (with most rain coming at harvest time). But, who knows? There may be pockets where fine wine is possible.

Dylan · 1 year ago

Wow, I have never been to China, though I have a number of friends from there with whom I grew up. Thanks for giving me this perspective on the wine market there, and more than, that the dry winter season. Do you have any intent to spark an initiative or program in educating palates and making wine more accessible to them in that respect?

Edward · 12 months ago

Thanks, Dylan. My pleasure. In terms of education, our company, Dragon Phoenix, is the only WSET provider in Beijing that does not import wine. So we show our Chinese students wines from all over the world. But, critically, although we have to teach them the 'WSET way' of describing wine(s), we also incorporate Chinese terms/vocabulary into our power-points. In fact, we are hoping to work on a glossary of terms and we do keep records of our tasters first impressions, plus linking specific wines with certain Chinese products. We also do a lot of translation work, including wine portfolios with tasting notes (all of which have to be rendered in intelligble Chinese). But there is a lot of work to be done.