China Just Launched Bottles of Wine Into Space for an Experiment

--FILE--A Chinese farmer harvests grapes used to make wine at a vineyard in Zaozhuang city, east China's Shandong province, 25 August 2015. The death knell for expensive wine gifts is clanging loudly and clearly during Beijing’s age of austerity. But China’s wine market is riding a wave of positive (although perhaps unintended) consequences. Gone are the days of seeking guanxi (business connections) with a bottle of Hennessy XO. Wine culture has gone mainstream and a new generation of Chinese drinkers are enjoying more wine with greater frequency. Wine drinking is shifting focus from the tables of upscale restaurants to the comfort of people’s homes. Restaurants are still the most popular place to enjoy a bottle, but home drinkers make up a growing proportion of China’s wine market. These tipplers relax with a 250 yuan (HK$300) bottle a couple of nights a week, splashing out a few times a year on something more expensive. These – China’s first real wine consumers – will gradually, but comprehensively, fill the gifting gap. Speaking at the recent Wine in China conference in Hong Kong, Judy Chan, CEO of Grace Vineyard, divulged that her company’s sales normalised to single-digit growth in 2015, after more than 10 years of double- and triple-digit growth. Chan said that the rise of China’s first real wine consumers is a fascinating phenomenon for the wine industry to ponder. At last, wine drinkers are the people who are actually buying the wine. The average Chinese wine drinker these days is a less extravagant – but nonetheless aspirational – everyman or woman.