40 million Chinese consumers drink wine at least two times a year

Following the release yesterday of its China Wine Market Landscape Report, Richard Halstead, who is co-founder and COO at Wine Intelligence, told the drinks business that it wouldn’t be long before a major international wine brand made significant headway in the country.

“It is only a matter of time before there is a big brand breakthrough,” he stated.

Continuing, he explained, “The market for a proper, sensibly-price, brand-led offer is probably more open now in China than it has ever been.”

His belief stems from research to show that Chinese retailers are increasingly stocking inexpensive New World wines for regular consumption, as opposed to luxury labels for occasional present-giving.

“The pre-austerity period of buying expensive wine, but not necessarily for enjoying, finished around 2013, and there has been the creation of a new market since then,” recorded Halstead.

As part of this change, supermarkets have shifted from seeking out “top-end Bordeaux” to “selling wine as cheap as you or I would have here [in the UK],” he said. He then added, “They have recognised that there is a consumer out there who is not just buying wine for a gift, so there is a reason for brands to exist.”

Helping this trend is “a broadening base of consumers”, he observed, noting that there are “now 40 million Chinese consumers who are drinking wine at least two times a year – which is significant, because even a cheap bottle is equivalent of a week’s wages.”

Currently, Chinese wine consumers aged between 18 and 29 account for four out of 10 consumers of imported wines and this age group are almost twice as likely as 40-54 year olds to buy wine from discount supermarkets.

Although the research showed that France and Bordeaux remain the most sought after labels for imported wine buyers, it also recorded that younger consumers are less likely to choose wine from traditional regions.

Halstead stated, “The wine consumers of the future are as likely to look for excellent quality at keen prices from the New World as they are prestige wines from major European regions.”

In particular, Chile, Australia and New Zealand are among the countries best-placed to make the most of the changing opportunities as their countries have free-trade agreements with China.

Among other findings in the report, it was shown that the country’s crackdown on lavish business lunches has seen the average price paid for such occasions fall from the equivalent of US$83 to US$77 in the past year.

For informal meals at home the fall in average spend is even more dramatic, from US$37 to US$26.

The China Landscapes 2015 report is based on research carried out among more than 1000 Chinese imported wine drinkers in April 2014 and March 2015.

Commenting on a further piece of Wine Intelligence research on Chinese consumer types, which was published earlier this year, Halstead concluded, “We are moving from the era where prestige wine was only bought as a face-enhancing gift towards a world where consumers care more about how it tastes – because they will be drinking it themselves – and how much it costs, because they are more likely to be paying for it themselves as well.”