Wealthy snap up more French wineries
Number of Bordeaux vineyards owned by Chinese rises to 83 from three in five-year span
Chinese wine connoisseurs have been known to pay top dollar for good wine, and they're showing a taste for acquiring Bordeaux's renowned vineyards.
Pierre Goguet, president of the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce, said the number of Chinese-owned vineyards in the area synonymous with the red quaff had grown to 83 from three in the span of just five years.
And Chinese wealth is said to be behind an additional 30 transactions in progress.
One reason the investors were acquiring the vineyards was to make wine for export to the mainland, said a visitor at Vinexpo, a wine trade fair in Hong Kong that ends today.
But tourism is also fuelling many of the deals. As Chinese tourists flock to French wine-producing regions, Chinese entrepreneurs want to market the chateau experience to luxury-loving tourists.
The Bordeaux chamber said the number of Chinese visitors had grown by one-fourth over the past four years. Many of the tourists had their interest in vineyards whetted by the growing popularity of wine culture on the mainland.
France as a whole received a record of 1.4 million visitors from China last year. It was part of the surge in Chinese outbound tourists, which reached 97.3 million last year, 14 million more than two years earlier.