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Robin Lynam

People in Hong Kong are drinking a lot of wine and spirits, and are expected to drink a lot more. And the Chinese mainland is going to follow suit.
That in a nutshell - or possibly a shot glass - was the message Robert Beynat, chief executive of Vinexpo, delivered on Tuesday.  
He was announcing details of Vinexpo Asia Pacific 2012, which will take place here at the end of May, and the findings of the annual study of global wine and spirit consumption commissioned by Vinexpo from  International Wine and Spirit Research (IWSR). 
For Beynat  the most pressing issue facing the wine and spirits trade in Asia is convincing consumers that quality of product does not necessarily equal astronomical price. 
He believes that the obsession of the Asian markets with the top names of Bordeaux has led to some fine but more moderately priced wines being underrated.
'The real challenge in the Asian markets is that people have to understand that there are good wines at each price. Wine is not just for the elite. There is wine for everybody. It's not good for people to assume that good wine means expensive wine. That's the challenge for the distributors and the restaurateurs,' he says. 
He had some interesting figures to disclose. 
 As reported  yesterday in the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong's per capita consumption of wine is now the highest in Asia and most of what we drink is red. Our consumption of spirits has been slipping a bit, but over the next five years is forecast to pick up. 
 Nothing unexpected there, according to Beynat, who says that forward projections on the basis of IWSR figures have been fairly consistently reliable over the 10 years the two organisations have been conducting the studies. 
'When we compare our predictions of five and six years ago with the reality, we were not wrong,' he says. 'There were no surprises in Hong Kong because of the zero per cent tax.'
Beynat regards developments in both wine consumption and production in China as encouraging.  
China is both drinking more and making more, having moved up the rankings to become the world's  fifth largest wine market and  sixth largest wine producer. 
The study's market predictions are based on figures up to the end of 2010, and thus can take only limited account of the euro-zone crisis, or the dented confidence in high-end Bordeaux attributable to rampant counterfeiting on the mainland and hyperinflated en primeur  prices for the past two vintages. 
Beynat says, however, that market intelligence from last year was taken into account, and a forecast that by  2015 China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Malaysia between them will account for 53.7 per cent of growth  in worldwide wine consumption is sound. 
Figures like these are among the reasons why Vinexpo, which has taken all the available space in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre  for the show running from May 29 to 31, was booked out six months in advance. 
'Everybody wants to sell in Asia, and at the same time there is a world crisis. People trust Asian markets, and as Vinexpo was very successful in 2010, they trust us,' he says.
Past criticisms of the show include allegations of a Franco-centric bias and objections to the failure to provide public access on even one day of the exhibition, contrary to the convention at shows such as the  Trade Development Council's Hong Kong International Wine and Spirits Fair.  
Beynat is unrepentant on both issues. 'We decide the balance between French and non-French and between regions. France  has hired half of the  floor area, and we prefer individual participation - company booths rather than regional booths or national booths. The organisations in charge of promotions for Italy and Spain will not be here this time, but instead we have more space taken by exhibitors from Italy, and only a little less from Spain,' he says.
He does however welcome the return this year, after 'years of sickness' of an Australian pavilion - 'We are very happy about the Australians coming back' - and the return of other absentees from previous shows, such as New Zealand and the French drinks giant  Pernod Ricard.
There will be 30 countries this year, two fewer than in 2010, because Brazil and Turkey filed their applications too late. 
Wine lovers from outside the trade will find, like Brazil and Turkey, that there is no room  at the inn. 
'It is strictly closed to the consumer. That is the key to its success,' he says succinctly, a point echoed at the press conference by Vinexpo Asia-Pacific chairman Dominique Heriard Dubreuil.  'Another new thing is that we have more seminars and tastings. We had 53 slots and the 53 slots are full,' he adds, referring to the Vinexpo 'academy' programme of wine trade education sessions, now a well-subscribed component of  the show.
Although he bangs the drum for the Asian markets, Beynat does have concerns about the wine and spirits industry investing so many of its hopes in a single region. 
'Every time I say to the producers, the negociants,  and the big companies, 'Don't forget the main market of the world', which is America. China is the fastest growing market but it is starting from a very low point,' he stresses.
Asia does seem to be the only bright hope for growth for the spirits business, though. According to the IWSR study, Asia is the leading region in the world for consumption of spirits, with an overall market share of  59 per cent, compared to America's  15 per cent.  
Between 2006 and 2010 spirits consumption rose marginally in America and fell in Europe.  Asia-Pacific consumption rose by almost 60 per cent over the same period, in a sense, a sobering thought.  
No wonder Pernod Ricard wanted its booth back.




How Asia has the world's measure