27 November 2006 - The French Beaujolais nouveau has come into the market. Recently the French media has covered the promotion activities of Beaujolais nouveau in the Chinese market.
At a professional conference of the French grape producing areas, Dominique Piron, vice chairman of Inter Beaujolais, a promotion organization of Beaujolais nouveau, said that wines with low liquor content like grape wines and ratafee are most popular among the Chinese university students and first wine drinkers. However, even though the market share of other French wine brands has been growing rapidly in China, Beaujolais nouveau has very limited share in the Chinese market, with a total sales of only 80,000 bottles in 2005.
Presently Beaujolais nouveau sells very well in the Asian areas, especially in Japan, where annual sales of 2005 reached 12 million bottles, with a per capita consumption of 0.1 bottle annually. In France, annual per capita wine consumption is 57 liters, while only 0.7 liter in China, indicating a large potential market for grape wines, especially for new wines.