MEDIA RELEASE: 10 July 2024
Buyers of Australian wine in China now have access to expert, independent and professional reviews, rating and commentary on Australian wine in their own language and on their favourite social media platform. They can now make buying decisions based on information and ratings from a source they already trust.
Leading Australian wine critic Jeremy Oliver has some positive news for Australian wine companies seeking to engage with the China market. His startup Australian platform, Oliver’s Wines, has just opened on WeChat, China’s favourite social media platform with more than 1.35 billion monthly users.
Oliver has a long association with Chinese buyers of Australian wine, having visited the country 65 times, published six books in Chinese and presented four top-rating seasons of online wine educational television. He has also hosted countless wine events in China for government and private entities. Now that the Chinese government has removed trade barriers to Australian wine, this timing is particularly important given that many Australian wine brands are seeking to re-engage with Chinese buyers.
Oliver is also keen to engage with the 1.3 million Australian residents of Chinese origin in their first language. ‘Oliver’s Wines is becoming a genuinely bilingual platform that will enable Chinese people of whatever level of ability in English to better understand and buy from Australia’s leading wine producers’, he says.
The WeChat presence for Oliver’s Wines combines an Official Account page with an H5 store. WeChat users are now able to search for the Oliver’s Wines official account page, which provides a series of links to different features within the Oliver’s Wines platform, hosted on the H5 store within the WeChat environment.
Oliver’s Wines is shortly to expand into the secondary market for wine and will be listing premium offerings of old and rare wines from Australia and overseas. While the company will not be exporting wine to China in the immediate term, China-based buyers of well-cellared bottles of Australian classics such as Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Special Bin Numbers and Henschke Hill of Grace will be able to purchase from the Oliver’s Wines WeChat store to deliver to an Australian address. Oliver’s Wines can also set up professionally managed cellaring facilities in Australian cities for Chinese buyers.
‘While we aren’t directly exporting to China, our WeChat presence enables us to connect with and become a source of independent opinion and rating for all things Australian wine to Chinese people, here and in China itself. We look also forward to providing information about and access to the best-cellared bottles of classic Australian wine in Chinese’, says Oliver.
