The opportunity China represents can only be exploited if brand owners truly understand they must cater for a radically different market.

The China Wine Market Landscape Report, a new study from Wine Intelligence, sets out the opportunities in a country that has an estimated 34 million ‘upper-middle class consumers’ – a figure that should rise to 82 million by 2025. But exporters will only make headway if they have specific strategies for China and don’t simply see it as another market.

Global brand owners must find out what the Chinese really want, explain their products, and understand they must be tailored to Chinese needs. Consumers still find the process of buying imported wine difficult because even in international supermarkets like Carrefour or Tesco there is little information on the label to tell them what the wine is.

Most of the wine industry round the world would agree that Asia in general and China in particular, represent a colossal opportunity for sales growth over the next 20-30 years, yet the closer you get to the market, the more you see that global brand owners have a lot of work still to do, both in terms of distribution and product positioning, to really engage with Chinese consumers.

China is already the eighth largest wine market by volume. The report quotes recent data putting it at 72m cases, and growing at 18.5 percent a year. While 90 percent of the wine drunk in China is domestically produced, this growing rump of affluent consumers increasingly chooses imported wine.

“There is no doubt that there is a new generation of urban professionals in their 20s and 30s who like drinking wine.”