WA winemakers look to Asia to beat industry downturn
By Georgia Loney of The West Australia

WA winemakers are turning to emerging markets in Taiwan, Nepal and South Korea to help the industry through the global economic crisis, as traditional markets in Britain and the US dry up.

Major wine importers from Japan, Nepal, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand toured WA wine regions this week in search of supplies.

The value of Asian markets is rising rapidly, with China and Taiwan buying 54 per cent and 23 per cent more of Australian wine over the past year, while the volume of exports to Nepal is up 97 per cent.

Taiwanese wine importers Shelly Wu and Winston Lin signed a deal last month to import Cullen Wines from Margaret River and said there was a strong market for Australian fine wine in Taiwan but it was overwhelmingly for red varieties. Ms Wu said WA shiraz was popular. “The market for (fine wine) has been developed over the last 20 years but they mostly used to drink French wines. Now there is stronger interest in new world wines,” she said.

“There is strong interest in shiraz from Australia and the cabernet sauvignon is beautiful compared to the European style. We are adding to our portfolio of WA wines because the wine style is very elegant and very approachable to the Taiwanese palate.”

Nepalese wine buyer Amit Agrawal imports wine from the Hunter Valley in NSW and is yet to buy any WA wine.

He said the tiny country’s thriving tourism industry generated demand for fine wine. “Because we like spicy types of food, sauvignon blanc goes well,” he said.

Britain and the US remain by far the biggest wine export markets but their value has fallen 20 per cent and 12 per cent respectively over the past year.

The concept of “sister cities” is something I first learned about when Wikipedia came online a few years ago. When you “wiki” a city, it conveniently provides you a list of sister cities.

For instance, when living in Suzhou, China I “wikied” the city to learn some random facts. Suzhou’s sister cities in the United States include such places as Jacksonville, Florida and Portland Oregon. Go figure?

The concept of sister cities never crossed my mind again, that is until I read this great article and learned that Stina’s Cellars, a vineyard from Tacoma, Washington managed to break into the China market via their sister city of Fuzhou, China.

After three consecutive delegations of representatives from Fuzhou, China visited the vineyard and sampled the wine, calls started coming in and Stina’s Cellars suddenly found it self with 224 cases in new orders from a market they never thought they would be selling to. One importer recently emailed the Washington Vintner and asked “What’s the maximum capacity of the winery? I want to know how much I can get.”

It is clear there is untapped demand in China for a variety of products. The real challenge for vintners, agents and exporters is to find away to connect buyers and sellers. There are websites like Alibaba and Chinabusinesworld, but the internet only extends so far.

Here are a few excerpts from the article:

“When I got the call about the tastings I was like, well, it was worth taking a chance on,” Preston said. “The market over there is expanding, and I want to expand. Hopefully, we’ll be able to expand together. And it was just one city, instead of all of China. If it would have been all of China, I would have said, ‘No thanks.’”

About a month later Preston learned that the population of Fuzhou tops 6.6 million – slightly larger than the state of Washington.

To say Perry and Penny Preston, and their son, Ethan, grew Stina’s Cellars from humble beginnings doesn’t do justice to their story.

The old joke in the wine industry goes, “Q: How do you make a small fortune in the winery business? A: Start with a large fortune.”