Wine Australia expects China to become the largest export market for Australian wine by 2015. With a current share of the world’s fastest-growing wine market at 20%, Australia has everything to gain or lose. Trouble is, the reputation of Australian wine is a fragile commodity. Jin Zhigou, chairman of China’s largest brewery, Tsingtao, expects his company to build a bottling plant for bulk imports of Australian wine at its base at Qingdao, to utilise its extensive local distribution network to ‘reduce the distribution and marketing costs for the wine’. Let’s hope this country doesn’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.
