His family owns seven vineyards, including Chateau Tour Saint Christophe and Chateau Bellefont-Belcier in Bordeaux; his father bought his first chateau, Haut-Brisson in Saint-Emilion in 1997.

Kwok says his father loves French culture, as he was born and raised in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam.

“He grew up with French architecture and baguettes. When he looked for something to buy in the 1990s, he [was surprised to find out] that he could buy a vineyard for the same price as a flat in Hong Kong. He invests in vineyards out of passion. Each of my two sisters also received a chateau as a gift from him. The vineyards are close to each other so that when our families are in France, we can visit one another easily. [Our vineyards], staffed by over 30 employees, produce around 300,000 bottles every year which we sell all around the world.”

Kwok says his family’s business strategy is to buy vineyards that have good terroir, but are run sub-optimally.

“A well-managed property located on top terroir, if for sale at all, would command a huge premium. So we are more interested in buying properties that have amazing potential but have room for improvement in operations.

“For La Patache, once I took up its operation in 2012, I set about renovating the cellar and the chateau. I also rehabilitated the vines by pulling out almost a third of them because of disease infestation. Though the vines were replanted in 2015, they won’t mature until 2021. Winemaking is a very long-term investment.”

Su Liyuan, a finance graduate from Fordham University in the United States who earned an MBA from Peking University, bought two wine estates in Tasmania, Australia – Nocton Vineyard and Campania Hills Vineyard – with his cousin Leo Guo Chau in 2013. Su was 24 at the time and Guo was 22.

Su says that investing in a winery needs not only love but also the stamina to endure hardships. He says he had to live in Tasmania on his own for six months to assemble a team of staff, as his cousin was at university in Madrid, and unable to help.

“The worst part was loneliness. I had no friends in Tasmania, and all the people or mentors [there] were way older than me. I was so lonely that I even started to talk to myself. It was very cold at night and I had to go into the woods to find dry wood to put into the stove. I was a city dweller before and had no survival skills in the wild. The woods were pitch black. I couldn’t even see my hands. I pulled over the car to find the woods and imagined animals attacking me from all directions.

“Every morning I would jog around the vineyards to keep myself in shape and check whether wallabies were eating our grapes. However, in retrospect, I thought that was probably the best time of my life as I learned a lot and met many friendly people there.”

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Su says meticulous preparation is also needed for winemaking novices before they make investments.

“Before, my cousin was studying in Madrid. I visited him and we travelled around Spain and Europe. When two guys were on the road, the thing we did most was drinking. We had the idea of investing in wine. We travelled to Europe, Brazil, Cuba and Australia looking for wines and spirits to export to China. When we were in Australia, we visited all the vineyards in Tasmania and we especially loved the pinot noir and chardonnay produced there. We knew that some vineyard owners there were willing to sell due to financial reasons or old age.”

Their properties – Nocton Vineyard and Campania Hills Vineyard – are in the Coal River Valley of Southern Tasmania. The valley runs between dolerite-capped hills that shelter the vines from prevailing winds and rainfall. The two vineyards, totalling 50 hectares in size, produce an annual total of 260,000 bottles of pinot noir, merlot, chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, sauvignon blanc, merlot and sparkling wine.

“The place is gorgeous,” Su says. “For the Nocton Vineyard, the vines were first planted in 1999 on gentle dolerite-based soils over calcareous sandstone subsoil, which produces great pinot and chardonnay. Currently, our wine is mainly sold in Australia as we are developing Chinese channels. Tasmania is not well known in China, so we need some time and capital to educate the China market. We are also trying to find partners in Korea, the UK and Japan.”

Chinese acquisitions of Western vineyards have stirred sensitivities about growing Chinese investment. Last year, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would work to prevent foreign investors buying French farms after it emerged that a Chinese fund had bought nearly 3,000 hectares of wheat fields in the centre of the country.

However, Su, who has since ceded most of the daily wine management to his cousin so he can work full time as Citic Trust’s vice-president for cross-border equity investments, believes that the influx of Chinese investment can enrich the Western winemaking industry.

“China has a long history of making all sorts of alcoholic drinks. Chinese investors can input new ideology or philosophy into winemaking. However, the owner or the manager has to be in their vineyard the whole time for the sake of viticulture, which is about agriculture and how much care you put into [the farm]. Lesser care and delayed decision making in response to weather changes will not only ruin the wine’s quality and production, but also the entire vegetation.”

Oxford graduate Lang Sailing, 28, whose family has co-owned Dominio de Cair, in Ribera del Duero in Spain, with the Luis Cañas family since 2013, says that the growing investment in Western wineries by Chinese should not be a political or nationalist issue at all.

“New capital is always going to enter the market when existing players are in financial need. China has been growing rapidly and the Chinese need for good quality wines grows with our economy. Acquisitions in the best winemaking regions around the world are a natural outcome of this development,” she says.

Isabella Ko Tsz-ching, the 28 year-old founder of Ohmydear Holding, a wine trading firm in Asia, says young Chinese vineyard owners have an international outlook which can enrich the global winemaking industry.

“In the past, [people thought] that the Chinese are not capable of buying or managing [top-drawer] wineries. They thought that when Chinese buy a winery, they only sell the wine to their Chinese friends and own networks. However, this is no longer the case as young Chinese vineyard owners have global business vision.”

Ko has recently opened The Merchants – a two-storey complex in the mould of Soho House in London – in a 70-year-old printing factory in Beijing with a wine bar, restaurant, coffee shop and art gallery. With a focus on boutique and fine wine selection, The Merchants hold wine-related exhibitions, master classes in wine appreciation, and wine-tasting events, some of which featured wines from Lang, Su and Kwok’s vineyards.

Ko says, “The new young generation of Chinese customers are willing to try new things and are more adventurous than their parents. It’s no longer just about the wine’s origin or brand any more. It’s more about the story behind the wine and the experience [of sampling quality wine].”