3.
French Vintners Woo China's Nouveau Riche
(Wine - Business development / Sales / Advertising / PR / Marketing)
SAINT-EMILION, France: Last year, Yan Xin tasted
wine for the first time in her life - not any wine, but a $700 bottle
of 2005 Cheval Blanc from this fabled village near Bordeaux. "It was
fruity and the alcohol wasn't too strong," says the 26-year-old from
the Chinese coastal province of Jiangsu.
The experience steered the newly minted
business-school graduate away from her parents' dream of a career in
pharmaceuticals and toward an idea whose time, she hopes, has come: Her
homeland is ready to savor the finer things in life, one of those
things being French wine.
"Wine is an art," she says. "Like painting or music."
That attitude has made Ms. Yan, who says she is
Saint-Emilion's lone Chinese resident, a hot commodity among the creme
de la creme of French vintners eager to groom an Asian ambassador
worthy of their silky reds and fruity whites.
Late last year, after weighing nine job offers, Ms.
Yan settled on a position with Chateau Valandraud, which was founded in
the 1990s by Jean-Luc Thunevin, a former bank teller. Renowned critic
Robert Parker considers his wines to be among the world's best reds.
Mr. Thunevin hopes Ms. Yan can help him crack the
code of marketing wine that has world-class taste - but not the backing
of a famous name - to the nouveaux riches of Asia's hottest economy. He
needs the help: Last year, he sold just 744 bottles on the mainland.
"She speaks three languages, and her parents are doctors, so she knows
people in the upper classes," he says.
China's fledgling wine market poses numerous
obstacles. Without well-schooled palates, Chinese consumers are known
for favoring brand cachet over taste. The droll among Saint-Emilion's
vintners like to tell the story of one Chinese businessman who orders
the occasional bottle of 1982 Chateau Lafitte - valued at some $2,000 -
only to mix it with Coca-Cola. Ms. Yan allows: "People I know still put
ice and juice in their wine."
European trade officials say fine wine is one of the
few agricultural products in which Europe enjoys a clear advantage over
Asia. "We need to exploit niche products like cheese and wine," says
European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.
Since 2001, Chinese overall wine imports have grown
to $133 million from $32 million. Wine experts think China's market for
imports could one day match America's, valued at more than $2 billion a
year.
Elite vintners from Saint-Emilion, Medoc and other
prestigious regions in France have the most potential in the high end
of China's wine market, experts say. The market for table wine belongs
to Chile, Spain and Australia.
The French education of Ms. Yan began in 2004 when
she decided to pursue a master's degree in business administration in
Rennes, the capital of Brittany. She had hoped to parlay an internship
that came with the program into a spot in one of France's big
pharmaceutical companies. Instead, she received an intriguing offer.
Last spring, a cousin who imports wine to China
helped her land a six-month internship at a 130-year-old chateau called
Maison Riviere.
When owner Philippe Riviere picked her up at the
Saint-Emilion train station, she introduced herself as "Jessica," a
name she initially thought more in tune with Western culture. Her
Chinese name pronounced in French sounds exactly like the word for
China (Chine, pronounced sheen).
Surrounded by romantic chateaux, "I felt like I was a princess in a movie," she says.
It didn't take long for Ms. Yan to catch the eye of
Christophe Lebail, Riviere's Japan export manager. The 39-year-old Mr.
Lebail, an accomplished chef, spent hours preparing sumptuous meals for
the novice, developing her palate for the wonders of foie gras and
pungent Reblochon cheese.
They recently moved in together.
Mr. Lebail has also helped Ms. Yan discover that
some Chinese stereotypes of the French simply aren't true. "In China,
people say the French are the world leaders in perfume because they
don't take showers," she says.
She is puzzled, though, at how much the French seem
to go on strike, and smoke. "In China, if you strike, they just tell
you to go home," she says. "And I thought that in a developed country
like France, people wouldn't smoke so much."
Mr. Lebail predicts Ms. Yan will be a perfect envoy
for French wine in China. "You need to be educated and sensual to sell
wine," he says. "Wine is intrinsically feminine."
When Ms. Yan's internship with Riviere ended last
November, she opted to work with Mr. Thunevin thanks to his reputation
as a self-made man - which she likens to the rise of modern China.
In 2004, Mr. Thunevin first tried to ride the China
wave by joining a venture that was to make wine in China's Hebei
province. The experiment was a bust: Chinese workers didn't pick the
right grapes, smog often covered the sun and adequate barrels were
nowhere to be found.
Etablissements Thunevin produces 15 brands and
200,000 bottles, with annual sales of about $15 million. Its finest
wine sells for as much as $650 a bottle.
Ms. Yan is now a familiar, if uncommon, sight among
the wine bars and chateaux in Saint-Emilion. She walks among the
cobblestones in high-heeled boots and wraps her slender frame in a fake
fur coat. Fluent in Mandarin, French and English, she is also mastering
the stilted argot of the sommelier.
"I used to like wines that were easy to drink," she says. "Now, I believe in a long finish and a complicated structure."
She still has a few things to learn, however. In her
eagerness to innovate for her new employer, she betrayed her naivete
one recent day. She asked a colleague whether the French wine world
could take a lesson from Coca-Cola. Why not, she suggested, generically
label all French wine as "Bordeaux," even those made in Saint-Emilion?
"You can still have different kinds, like Coke light and Coke lemon,"
she said.
"Xin, that's against the law," said colleague Cecile
Montsec, patiently explaining France's strict labeling rules based on
regional classifications.
Nonplussed, Ms. Yan turned her attention to
translating Mr. Thunevin's blog postings into Chinese and sending email
solicitations to Chinese distributors, restaurants and hotels. She's
also preparing her own blog, "about what it's like to be the only
Chinese person in Saint-Emilion."
Eventually, says Ms. Yan, the Chinese will warm to
luxury wines. She is so confident of the market potential, she wants to
be paid on commission.
In the meantime, she is still struggling to think of
her new job at the vanguard of Old Europe's most famous export in local
terms.
"Remind me, how many bottles do we manufacture a year?" Ms. Yan says to Ms. Montsec.
"We don't manufacture anything, Xin," replies Ms. Montsec. "We create luxury."
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights
reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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