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Jacob’s Creek, Australia. Eyeing a highly lucrative new market, Australia’s Barossa Valley this week played host to 600 young “wine ambassadors” emblematic of China’s booming middle class.

The group, employees of global beverage giant Pernod Ricard, was brought to Australia for a crash course in appreciating a wine range specially developed for the Chinese palate.

With an average age of 31 and a taste for quality brands, the group is key to Pernod Ricard’s push of the premium Australian range into China’s flourishing wine market and its 200 million-strong middle class.

“We are definitely going after young new consumers that are coming into wine,” said Constantine Constandis, the company’s China managing director. “Our belief in China is it’s more than just the sales and marketing people that are dealing with the customers, it’s every one of your employees that becomes an ambassador.”

Pernod Ricard has cornered 45 percent of China’s spirit import market, building a name for itself on brands such as Chivas Regal, Ballantine’s and Absolut Vodka. But China’s seemingly boundless prosperity and thirst for the best of the West has opened up new opportunities, Constandis said.

“Their tastes are changing. They’re discovering the rest of the world. Their interest in international brands is growing. Very clearly, wine was the next frontier for us,” he added.

The 600 delegates came mostly from the key wine hot spots of Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou for the Barossa Valley experience, said Horace Ngai, head of the group.

They petted native kangaroos, koalas and emus, attended a wine-tasting master class with chief Jacob’s Creek winemaker Bernard Hickin and visited the vineyard’s “sensory lab” to learn how to spot a good vintage from its smell, taste and color.

Ngai said Pernod Ricard’s greatest challenge was to teach China’s middle class — still in its “infancy” when it comes to appreciating wine — why French wine was not always the best.

“The more affluent middle class group, in the next five to 10 years, will double. The biggest challenge is how fast we can educate our consumers,” Ngai said.

Hickin said the Winemaker’s Selection range was developed following research that found Chinese consumers — avid red wine drinkers — prefer vintages that are “fresh, vibrant, not too alcoholic and with soft tannins” because of the nature of Asian cuisine.

Jacob’s Creek is China’s top-selling imported wine and Australia is second only to France in the rapidly expanding import wine market, with a 20 percent share of the 10 million cases sold there each year.

Domestic products account for the lion’s share of wine consumed in China, with the local bijo — a 65 percent liquor — still preferred for meals and celebrations. Wine Australia, the government’s wine agency, has projected exports to grow by 50 percent this year to value 200 million Australian dollars ($176 million). Last month, it launched a major marketing push at the Shanghai World Expo.

“Just as the Australian wine story now needs a bold new chapter, we should be launching this initiative in China, the world’s next fine wine frontier,” said Lucy Anderson, Wine Australia’s Asia director.

China is currently Australia’s fourth-largest but fastest-growing wine destination, with 46 million liters sent there in the 12 months to June, an increase of 59 percent on the previous year.

It is expected to outstrip the United States, Britain and Canada to become Australia’s No. 1 customer by 2015.


Agence France-Presse