Hong Kong mid-market 'strong and solid'

Hong Kong is no longer a 'bipolar market', according to new research by Master of Wine Debra Meiburg.

Hong Kong: ‘broader than imagined’

‘Sixty-two percent of all wine business is mid-market – Hong Kong has a really strong, solid core. That’s not what anyone is saying about our market,’ Meiburg told Decanter.com.

According to the research, six out of every 10 bottles sold are between HK$100 and HK$150 – that is, for between £8 and £13 a bottle.

Nine percent of wines sold in the Special Administrative Region sell for less than HK$150 while sales over HK$1000 (£80) represent just 17% of the market.

Meiburg’s study is supported by Hong Kong on-trade specialist, Applied Wine.

Christian Pillsbury, managing director, said, ‘We hear a lot of hackneyed stories. A lot of people are saying there’s no middle market and producers are fooled into believing those stories, but there’s been very little consumer research until now.’

‘The market is broader than was imagined,’ he added.

According to Pillsbury, 73% of local respondents identified themselves as wine drinkers with 22% drinking wine once a week or more. Personal recommendation and brand prestige were the two key purchasing cues with region of origin unimportant.

Written by Rebecca Gibb

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Rebecca Gibb MW is a wine journalist and editor who has also founded Bamboozled games, ‘the world’s first wine and spirit puzzle makers’. Having spent six years living in New Zealand, she has recently returned to her native north-east England. While in New Zealand, she became a Master of Wine, graduating top of her class and winning the Madame Bollinger medal for excellence in tasting. A former winner of both the UK’s young wine writer of the year and the Louis Roederer Emerging Wine Writer, her first book The Wines of New Zealand was published in 2018. She also runs wine events and has her own consultancy business The Drinks Project. She was a judge at the 2019 Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA).