Around 80 Bordeaux wine professionals are setting off on six-city tour of China and India.
The Bordeaux chateaux owners, general managers and negociants will meet Indian and Chinese wine buyers and importers later this month – in a bid to better understand both burgeoning markets for Bordeaux wines.
Unlike tours by higher profile cru classé chateaux, this visit – taking in New Dehli, Bombay and Bangalore, then Beijing, Shanghai and Canton in China – will include lesser-known domains, some of which have no sales experience in either country, said Maryse Roba, owner of Château Vieux Robin, a Medoc cru bourgeois superior north of St. Estephe.
Roba told decanter.com, 'This is going to be a real discovery, we are going into opening markets.'
Potential participants sent samples and information to prospective Chinese and Indian importers and sellers, Julien Gagnard of organisers Proximum said.
For India, 34 Aquitaine producers and negociants will meet with 120 Indian importers and buyers, while 45 Aquitaine visitors will meet with 150 buyers and importers in China.
New Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore account for 80% of all wine consumption in India, Gagnard said. Even though the wine market is only just emerging, some 20% of wine consumed there is foreign, 'which represents high growth potential for wines from the Aquitaine region.'
Meanwhile, the Chinese market shows a 40% increase of imported wine per year, according to a Proximum press release. 'Even though only 10% of the Chinese population drink wine, this represents a potential of 130m wine consumers.'
Tastings with political and business leaders will also be held in the French embassies in India on 13 November and in China on 19 November.
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The "China Factor" in Bordeaux sales currently is only a factor to the extent it is used by the Bordelaise to scare its traditional markets into believing there is scarcity amongst these high production wines. A "40%" increase of squat is still squat. Ten to fifteen years from now, it may be significant. Right now, its only a marketing tool.
D. Skroback, New York City, USA
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