According to a study by Vinexpo and the British wine consumption firm, IWSR, the Chinese consume more red wine that the French. I quote: “China has dethroned France by becoming the first consumer of red wine in the world “, “With more than 155 million cases of nine liter bottles of red wine (or 1.865 billion bottles) consumed in 2013, an increase of 136% compared to 2008, China, including Hong Kong, now stands ahead of France (150 million cases), Italy (141), United States (134) and Germany (112). Source “avis-vin.figaro.fr »
Let’s bring these figures to a more concrete scale: China has 1.351 billion people against 65.7 million for France.
Let us now calculate: for China, 155 million cases for 1,351billion inhabitants, that means about 0.11 cases per capita. For France, 150 million cases for 65.7 million people, that is 2.28 cases per capita.
So on average, the French still consume more than twenty times the quantity of red wine than the Chinese. We are therefore far from being dethroned by this country, 15 years ago, China knew nothing about wine, and wine consumption in general was zero (0%), yes you heard right, zero! It was only around 2005 that the Chinese really did start getting interested in Bordeaux wines hereby causing the price spikes of the latter.
Without being chauvinistic, France, the country of wine history, with its incomparable wine regions and its Grand Crus delighting the many aficionados since many a year hasn’t said her last word and will keep her place on the throne.
