China’s new wine lovers: affluent millenials drinking more, turning to France, Chile and Australia
Crackdown on extravagance has seen wine consumption on mainland fall for two straight years
Wealthy young Chinese, having acquired a modicum of savoir faire and a taste for liquid luxury, are becoming game changers in one of the world’s biggest wine markets, prompting the country’s top wine merchants to also become providers of wine education.
This burgeoning army of wine aficionados offers a glimmer of hope for vintners, who have been battered by Beijing’s crackdown on extravagance and the mainland’s slowing economic growth.
I am amazed at how much young people like me are in love with wine
“I am amazed at how much young people like me are in love with wine,” said Yang Yanlin, the 25-year-old founder of a job search website who also runs wine courses in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. “We launched this programme in 2014 for our friends, and new faces kept turning up.”
Most of his more than 120 students, who paid about 4,800 yuan for a 16-hour wine appreciation course, were mainland Chinese professionals in their 20s or early 30s, ranging from banking analysts to tech engineers.
“They are well-educated, open to Western ideas, serious about their career, and on top of that, value the good things of the good life,” Yang said.
Yang embarked on his love affair with wine when studying in Paris in 2009. He signed up for a wine-tasting course in the French capital and obtained a level 3 certificate awarded by the London-based Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) not long afterwards.