Speaking at the opening of the first Hong Kong International Wine Fair earlier this month, acting financial secretary for the fair, Carrie Lam Cheng, announced that in eight years, the Asian market, excluding Japan, would be worth £800m (€1bn, US$1.5bn).
Lam also predicted that China's wine imports will grow to £465m (€590m, US$870m) by 2017.
China and Hong Kong command around 60% of the Asian wine market – Japan boasts under one third.
'Global wine demand is shifting from traditional markets like Europe and the US to Asia,' said Lam.
The trade fair, which opened on 14 August, and the removal of wine import taxes earlier this year, are part of Hong Kong's bid to become Asia's fine-wine trade hub.
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Kudos to the HK Government having the foresight to remove wine tax earlier this year and it would appear that their punt it paying off. Scanning the numbers, if China/HK is about 60% and Japan is about 30%, where does that leave places like Singapore?? Then again, they changed their already liberal wine duty of S$9.50 per liter to S$70 per liter of alcohol. The numbers themselves work out to around the same absolute amount but was this suppose to make it easier.. where's the logic? Still, we wait with bated breath to see if the Singapore or Malaysian Governments will follow suit??
Ivar Sing
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