Imports open up in Hong Kong

This morning’s newspaper reported that since Hong Kong has eliminated customs duty on imported wines, in the last two months, volumes coming into the country increased by 120% while the value of wine imports rose by 200%, compared to the same two months last year. The floodgates are opening to quench the big neighbour’s thirst...

Bordeaux wine merchants and China

At Vinexpo Hong Kong I get the impression that I took part in this major group educational effort organised for the Chinese on wine. Today they are hungry for contact with producers and business cards. Tomorrow, some of them will be buyers. But trying to get them to understand how wine distribution is organised around Bordeaux merchants is not easy!
It means explaining the classifications and how grands crus and crus classes are all distributed by the Bordeaux trade.
The value in restricting the number of suppliers, of grouping wines in small quantities to test a market is not yet appreciated by all. But the Chinese are learning fast and they will be able to comprehend the esoteric peculiarities of the Bordeaux wine market quicker than I will ever be able to read their writing!

The Chinese and wine

At Vinexpo, I was pleasantly surprised to see as many women as men attending the tasting held by the Saint-Emilion Grands Crus Classés. In France it took almost 2,000 years for women to come to wine (sometimes having to overturn disapproval from men).
In Hong Kong, wine is new. It isn’t made into something sacred nor weighed down by a cultural straightjacket. The Chinese approach wine without hang-ups, naturally and spontaneously. This is so refreshing!
We must be careful not to convince them otherwise by educating them about wine as if they were learning some sort of divine knowledge. Dragons breathe fire!
Anyway, they emptied 14 of my bottles in two hours!
They are enthusiastic, thirsty (for knowledge) … and there are a lot of them around!

The merchants recover their true role

The good thing about this 2007 vintage is that it enables the merchants to recover genuine credibility by playing their role as advisors for their customers. Especially in view of the wide differences and sometimes even contradictions between two journalists’ comments on the same wine, buyers are confused and turn to the merchants, who supply them to obtain real advice. Should they buy this or that chateau wine that has just been offered “en primeur”? There are probably no miraculous scores or at least precious few (Mr Parker has not given his final word as I write) to sell a vintage, whose quality alone is not enough to attract buyers. So we return to the fundamentals (quality, price, reputation, brand history, the work invested by the estate, etc.) and in this field, who better than your merchant supplier to give you the real guidance you need?