中国人为什么越来越喜欢葡萄酒？

中国人为什么越来越喜欢葡萄酒？

美国mercurynews.com网站5月12日发表John Boudreau文章，题为California wine winning favor among China's swelling middle class（加利福尼亚葡萄酒商正在赢得中国中产阶级的青睐》），文章摘编（译文来自参考啊）如下：

　　在因经济衰退而节俭度日的美国人狂饮乔氏食品连锁公司推出的“两美元葡萄酒”时，孙啸（音）却把在私人俱乐部用150美元一瓶的葡萄酒招待其朋友看得稀松平常。

　　一家房地产投资公司总经理孙啸说：“我喜欢葡萄酒，非常昂贵的葡萄酒。”他说此话时，服务生站在一旁，随时准备在他召唤时提供价格昂贵的葡萄酒。“这是人类与自然和谐共处的完美例子”。

　　在中国急速扩大的中产阶层中，越来越多的人像孙啸一样喜欢葡萄酒，许多中产阶层者正将长久以来在餐桌上流行的白酒和啤酒换成从法国和美国加州进口的昂贵葡萄酒。而这令加利福尼亚葡萄酒业陶醉于对前景的预期中。

　　刚刚变成葡萄酒爱好者的上海投资基金经理吉米•叶说：“越来越多的中国人关注健康，正从喝白酒转为喝葡萄酒。”

　　北京私人葡萄酒俱乐部老板吴建新（音）说，打开一瓶价格昂贵的葡萄酒，比如说4000美元一瓶的彼特鲁庄园葡萄酒，以签订一份商业合约，这标志着这份合约的重要性。在他的葡萄酒俱乐部，只提供最贵的法国葡萄酒。“这既表明了你的慷慨，也暗示着你有教养”。

　　他补充说，但是中国最近兴起的对葡萄酒的喜爱也反映了随着中国经济飞速发展而普遍流行的“最贵的一定是最好的新富阶层的思想”。

　　一家葡萄酒出口公司的副总裁盖伦•理查森说：“人们问我，‘你这最贵的葡萄酒是什么？’我会说‘昆塔莎’，大概2500元人民币。他们会说，‘这不够贵”。

　　加州一中国葡萄酒贸易公司执行董事克里斯托弗•贝罗了解到，中国人如此喜欢红酒的一个原因是，他们认为红色象征着幸运。

　　据世界上规模最大的国际葡萄酒及烈酒展览会的组织者说，从2004年到2008年，中国葡萄酒消耗量几乎翻了一番，增至约9亿瓶，部分得益于规模不大但在增长的国内葡萄酒业，这使得中国成为世界上第8大葡萄酒市场。在来来3年内，预计消耗量将猛增32%，增至12.6亿瓶。作为世界第二大葡萄酒市场，美国目前消耗量约为中国的三倍。

　　中国葡萄酒市场大部分呈两极分化现象，消费者要么买几美元的葡萄酒，要么花上每瓶1000美元以上购买珍贵的法国年份酒。葡萄酒商说：“我们的工作是打开中间市场，每瓶15美元到100美元。”

　　在中国，进口葡萄酒要征收14%的税，所以对于中国人而言，享用加利福尼亚的年份酒要比美国人更贵。

　　成本不是惟一的挑战，加利福尼亚葡萄酒酿造商在中国面临着严峻的竞争，尤其是来自法国的竞争。法国在中国出售葡萄酒已有数十年之久。

　　上海一家贸易公司的总经理金岩广（音）说：“在中国，法国葡萄酒总是排第一。”这家公司刚成立一年，专门进口加利福尼亚葡萄酒。据美国农业部数据，2008年，法国葡萄酒占中国市场所有进口瓶装葡萄酒的46%，而美国仅有5%的市场份额。

California wine winning favor among China's swelling middle class

By John Boudreau

jboudreau@mercurynews.com
Posted: 05/12/2010 03:59:41 PM PDT
Updated: 05/13/2010 08:43:48 AM PDT
BEIJING — At a time when recession-pinched Americans are swilling Two Buck Chuck, Sun Xiao thinks nothing of entertaining his friends with $150 bottles of wine at his private club.
"I like wine — very rich wine," Sun, chief executive of a real estate investment firm, said one recent evening as attendants — young women in traditional Chinese gowns — stood nearby, ready to serve up an expensive bottle at his beckon. "It's the perfect example of humanity and nature living in harmony."
Sun's appreciation of foreign wine is increasingly shared by others in China's swelling middle class, many of whom are replacing the long-popular baijiu grain liquor and beer at their dinner tables with French Bordeaux and Napa Valley zinfandels. And that has the California wine industry tipsy with anticipation.
"More and more Chinese want to take good care of their health and are shifting from baijiu (pronounced by-joe) to the grape," said Jimmy Ye, an executive in a Shanghai investment fund and a wine convert.
Opening up an expensive bottle — say, a $4,000 Château Petrus — to seal a business deal signals the seriousness of the relationship, said Wu Jianxin, who owns the Beijing private wine club QingPingHuiGuan, which serves only the most revered French wines. "It shows generosity and indicates you are cultured."
But China's new appreciation of foreign wine also reflects "a nouveau riche mentality that the most expensive must be the best" that is prevalent in China's booming economy, he added.
"People ask me, 'What's the most expensive wine you have?' '' said Gaylen Richardson, vice president of Via Pacifica Exports, a wine exporter started by David Duckhorn, a member of the prominent Napa Valley wine family who set up a Shanghai store about two years ago that replicates a Northern California tasting room. "I'll say, Quintessa, about 2,500 yuan ($366). They'll say, 'That's not expensive enough.' "
Richardson, a former wine buyer at Market restaurant in St. Helena, is among a growing group of pioneers seeking business in China after wine sales for California wineries last year fell for the first time in 16 years, according to wine industry consultants Gomberg, Fredrikson & Associates in Woodside.
"I get a call from wineries all the time. They are sitting on inventory," said Christopher Beros, managing director of California-China Wine Trading Co., which has offices in San Francisco and Shanghai. He holds regular wine tastings with his nine-person China staff to educate them on the subtleties of vintages and educate himself about the Chinese palette. One reason Chinese connoisseurs have a strong preference for red wine, he has learned, is that they believe the color signifies good luck.
"China is literally the Wild Wild West of the wine world," said Eric Pope, who overseas international wine programs for the San Francisco-based Wine Institute, a trade group representing more than 1,000 California wineries.
Wine consumption in China, promoted in part by a small but growing domestic wine industry, nearly doubled from 2004 to 2008 to about 900 million bottles, making it the eighth-largest wine market in the world, according to Vinexpo, organizer of one of the world's largest wine and spirits conferences. Over the next three years, consumption is expected to soar 32 percent, to 1.26 billion bottles. The United States, the world's second-largest wine market, consumes about three times as much wine as China.
Much of China's wine market is bipolar — consumers buy cheap bottles for a few dollars or dole out more than $1,000 a bottle for elite French vintages, Duckhorn said. "Our job is to open up the middle market, $15 to $100 a bottle," he said.
Imported wine in China is slapped with a 50 percent tax, so it's pricier for Chinese to explore California vintages than it is for Americans.
Cost is not the only challenge. California winemakers face tough competition in China, especially from the French, who have been selling wine in China for decades and who aren't above a little vinous trash-talking. They promote their wine as superior to all others, ignoring the historic 1976 "Judgment of Paris" blind tasting in which California chardonnays and cabernet sauvignons triumphed over their French counterparts.
"The French wines always come in first in China," said Yanguang Jin, general manager of AWA Shanghai Trading Co., a 1-year-old company that is importing California wine. In 2008, French wine represented 46 percent of all imported bottled wines, while the United States had only 5 percent of the market, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Wine Institute has launched a marketing push in China to educate the newly wealthy masses about California wine, whose fruity intensity is more in line with the Chinese palate, some sellers say.
In addition to competition from France, Italy, Australia, Chile and other winemaking nations, California wineries also face a threat common to many industries in China — copycats.
"There are a lot of fakes and the government has one eye open and one eye closed," Wu said. "The fake wine industry will employ a lot of people."
Widespread official corruption in China is another problem.
"A full case arrives on the dock and the inspector says, 'I have to keep one bottle. It's called inspection,' " Wu said. "A cargo comes in and two cases are taken."
It also is common for restaurants and other companies to sign exclusive agreements with one supplier — which shuts out newcomers.
The success of California wines in China will depend largely on word-of-mouth branding and guanxi — gaining favor through networking and relationship-building. A bit of unorthodox salesmanship might help as well.
Exporter Richardson, a big man, sometimes slings a wine bag around his body and charges through the streets of Shanghai: When he spots a restaurant, he walks in and asks if the managers would like a taste. On other days, he organizes wine tastings at Via Pacifica's wood-paneled outlet that includes comfortable living-room furniture arranged around a fireplace. Wine racks along the wall hold such star wines as the Goldeneye Pinot Noir, served at President Barack Obama's Inaugural Luncheon.
"This is a very immature market. They don't know much about wine," Richardson said one recent morning as he hoisted two cases of wine into a taxi to personally deliver them to two restaurants. "But the drive to know about wine is there."
Napa and Sonoma counties may be unfamiliar to many in this nation of 1.3 billion people, but California and the American spirit are well known.
"When I taste the red wine of America, I can feel the American culture," said Sun, the successful Beijing executive who is discovering California wine. "The wine produced by the Americans is more connected to the age — the times — than the French wine."