I am looking forward to a huge year in China in 2014. While it’s unlikely I’ll be there before early March, there are some exciting projects to bed down after the Chinese New Year. First of these is to launch the 2014 edition (the 3rd) of the Chinese language version of The Australian Wine Annual, published in China by the Beijing Publishing Group. Next is to film the third season of my bilingual online TV series, Enjoy Wine with Jeremy, in Beijing. This series will show a Chinese audience of more than 7.2 million viewers how to marry traditional Chinese cuisines with Australian wine. I am shortly to commence the building phase of the new web business in Shanghai and in April will be helping to present a series of events with Wine Australia’s team in China headed by Willa Yang. Details are yet to be confirmed, but there is a strong hope that under the banner of the first Australia Week in China we will be able to expand the activities with other key Federal entities.
Over the last year I have been fortunate to work with one of the most important wine magazines in China, RVF (La Revue du Vin de France) China edition, which allocates the majority of its coverage to non-French wine. Set up by my colleague Yin Lixue, I conducted a tasting with the magazine’s tasting panel that featured an extensive series of Australian wines to which I had allocated a score of 95 or more. This tasting gained significant coverage in the publication, as did an article I wrote about a dinner at which we paired a modern spin on traditional Beijing cuisine with a range of Victorian wines.
The significant number of fake wines on the Chinese market today is of great concern to me – not only because of the risk to reputation they represent for the producers whose wines are being faked, but also because they represent a major health issue for unwitting Chinese consumers. I am therefore extremely happy to be engaged in an Australian project based on world-leading technology that has the capacity for customers to test the integrity of wine at the point of purchase in China. Having learned a great deal recently about competing systems, I have no doubt whatsoever that the system, which is currently being introduced to key Australian wine exporters to China, is the best available. Like everyone else, Chinese people deserve the right to know what food and drink entering their bodies are real and which are fake, and I’m keen to further and foster this process. That’s just the start of it. I’ll keep you posted as more ideas become reality.
I wish each of you a happy and successful Year of the Horse.
