While the rests of the wine world finds it harder to meaningfully communicate with a new generation of consumers, producers in China are taking more direct approaches.
"Our wine is good enough but most people have not heard of it," winemaker Zhongxiang Deng says. "And people who have not heard of it have not tasted it. We need to reach our real customers, to use our beautiful wine to touch their taste buds, and to appeal to their wallets with reasonable prices."
How can a winemaker inspire 100-plus tastings across China while tied down consulting for ten producers in the Ningxia region? By leveraging wine allies in cities nationwide.
Deng Zhongxiang, covered in Wine Searcher two years ago as "China's Driving Winemaker", is part of a new wave of creative promotions that gets more wines into more mouths.
But before we get to Deng’s story, here is a trio of other new promotions in a market where sales have proven tough for a decade and many producers lean on contest medals, high scores and kudos from trade people to appeal to consumers.
Through the grapevine
Jack Zhang of The Cellar Project in Ningxia recently started an adopt-a-vine program to connect consumers with his vineyard and reveal more about the grapes behind the wines.
The concept is simple: pay RMB288 ($40) and a disc bearing your name is placed on a vine. You get regular updates about the vine and, ultimately, a bottle of wine made from that plot.
"We started the program two months ago and had around 50 people join," says Zhang. "We are growing [this project] organically, we are not pushing hard."
Zhang says the initiative can inspire consumer loyalty and participants can even visit the vines.
"Given that people are now drinking less, wine is all about emotional value," he says.
And while $40 is inexpensive, given how pricy quality Chinese wines tend to be and the amount of work the project will take, Zhang says it is still more lucrative than wholesaling.
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