Liquor firms look beyond China in hunt for new Asian drinkers

FE Team | Published: May 26, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

HONG KONG, May 25 (AFP): Young middle-class drinkers from Asia's emerging economies are being targeted as China's voracious appetite for wine slows down, organisers said ahead of the region's largest- ever wine and spirits fair, which opens Tuesday in Hong Kong.
The Vinexpo trade show, set to attract more than 1,000 exhibitors from around the world, will include a cocktail bar, talks on pairing wine with regional cuisine, and tastings of Chinese wines, such as baijiu, made from sorghum.
It comes as Chinese wine consumption saw its first decline in a decade last year, partly influenced by Beijing's anti-corruption measures as well as a more sluggish economy.
"There was a slowdown of the economy in China last year. There was also this anti-luxury message coming from Beijing," Guillaume Deglise, chief executive Officer of Vinexpo Asia-Pacific, told AFP.
Overall wine consumption in the country dropped by 2.5 per cent in 2013, the first decline after ten years of uninterrupted growth at an astonishing rate of around 25 per cent per year, according to a Vinexpo survey.
Claire Henry, Hong Kong-based manager for French online wine auction company idealwine.com said that with the austerity and restriction drive led by Chinese president Xi Jinping, the country's market "is no longer crazy". "It's not an easy market now. China has closed a bit of its door," she said.
A drop in official parties and dinners-part of the austerity drive - is "a sign of this evolution", she said.
However, she added, such consolidation could result in higher market quality, with fewer counterfeit wines and less "opportunists" seeking profits rather than purchasing wine for its quality.
China overtook France as the world's largest consumer of red wine in 2013, guzzling more than 155 million 9-litre cases or 1.865 billion bottles that year, according to Vinexpo. It remains the region's leading wine consumer and the world's fifth largest market for wine overall, overtaking the United Kingdom in 2012.