How China Conquered France’s Wine Country
French connoisseurs sold the Chinese pomp and prestige, until they started manufacturing it themselves.
French connoisseurs sold the Chinese pomp and prestige, until they started manufacturing it themselves.
When 45 alumni of Tsinghua University, the alma mater of China’s last two leaders, stopped for lunch at La Motte vineyard in South Africa two years ago, they ordered 1.5 million rand ($141,000) of wine to take away.
In a country where cheap plonk and overpriced mediocre wines still define the domestic industry, the French are partnering with Chinese investors to produce super-premium wines for increasingly discerning drinkers at the...
Though China is the world’s fifth-largest wine market, people just don’t go for bubbly that much. Moët Hennessy is trying to alter that trend by opening a new French chateau in poor and predominantly Muslim Ningxia.
Wine-tasting party conversations among investors in China are increasingly sounding like sour grapes.
Some well-heeled wine investors have been anxiously debating whether a price bubble for investment-grade wine is getting ready to burst....