INTERNATIONAL: Report, California winemakers, Chinese and other Asian buyers a rapidly growing market for California wines....

* Los Angeles Times:? "California winemakers court Chinese buyers" - "U.S. wineries exported $62 million of wine to China in 2011, a 42% increase from 2010, and most of it came from California. China is a small but rapidly growing market for the state's wineries." - From the LAT:

LODI, Calif. ? With bottles ready for tasting, a group of Lodi wine producers waited anxiously recently for a delegation of monied businesspeople they hoped to impress. The vintners burst into applause when the group finally arrived, more than an hour late. The guests weren't Hollywood moguls or Silicon Valley venture capitalists. They were potential customers and investors from the city of Shenyang in northern China, coming to check out Lodi as a potential source of affordable wine to supply China's rapidly growing market.

The rising middle class in China and other Asian-Pacific countries is one of the wine world's fastest-growing markets. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, China is expected to add 235 million consumers by 2020 and will account for 20% of the global luxury market by 2015.

U.S. wineries exported $62 million of wine to China in 2011, a 42% increase from 2010, according to the Wine Institute, an advocacy group for California's $61.5-billion wine industry. Exports to Hong Kong jumped 39% in the same period, to $163 million. Those numbers ? while small compared with the total market ? have grabbed the attention of wineries looking for alternatives to the cutthroat competition of U.S. wine sales. California wine accounts for 90% of U.S. exports.

"If you structure the deal correctly, it's both safer and more profitable to sell to China than it is to sell domestically," said Frank Gayaldo, director of international development for the Lodi Chamber of Commerce and organizer of the tasting. "Imports are eating up roughly 20% of our domestic [wine] market, and it's difficult for small wineries to get good distribution contracts."

One Lodi winery at the tasting already sells more wine in China than in the United States. . . . . . . . .

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Along with a having growing taste for designer clothes and high-end watches, China and other Asian nations are deepening their thirst for wine. At first, Chinese consumers were interested mostly in elite California brands and highly coveted "first growth" French wines, such as Chateau Petrus and Chateau Lafite Rothschild, which sell for thousands of dollars per bottle. Now, a softening Asian economy has led to more interest in value-friendly California brands. . . . . . .

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The Chinese aren't interested only in buying California wine. Increasingly, they're also looking to buy the wineries and vineyards themselves. The high-end Sloan Estate Winery, which offers some bottles for upward of $600, sold its property to a Hong Kong conglomerate in 2011 for $40 million. Also last year, Zhang Winery of China bought Napa's Frazier Winery out of bankruptcy.

Other countries have also invested in Napa wineries...............

Source: http://www.emmasmemos.com/memos/2012/7/9/international-report-california-winemakers-chinese-and-other.html

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