CHINA & WINE: ONLY 5 YEARS AGO IT WAS 20TH AMONG WINE IMPORTERS. TODAY IT IS ONE OF THE TOP FIVE "BIG SPENDERS". CHINA (SAYS ISMEA) SPENT OVER 1 BILLION EUROS ON WINE IMPORTS IN 2011, JUST BEHIND THE U.S., UK, GERMANY AND CANADA

Only five years ago China was in twentieth place among wine importing countries. Today it is in the top five "big spender" list. The Ismea (institute of services for the agricultural market) analysis based on data from GTI (Chinese customs source), reveals that China spent more than 1 billion euros on wine imports in 2011, ranking just behind the USA, UK, Germany and Canada. The demand in Peking is growing exponentially, as evidenced by the 72% increase in value in 2011, and in one year China jumped up four positions to the world's top importing countries, ahead of Japan, Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

France has benefited the most from Chinese buying pressure. Last year its market share was over 50% in value of Chinese imports, thanks to exports that almost doubled in value compared to 2010.

Australia and Chile follow France with shares of 15% and 7.2%, respectively. Then, Spain and Italy, with to 6.9% and 6.5%, whose sales in China nearly doubled last year.
At this growth rate - explains Ismea - China, which has expressed only part of her potential, could soon approach the two main wine importers - the U.S. and the United Kingdom. In 2011 these two countries bought wine products from abroad for nearly 3 and a half billion euros each, a total value of wine imports of 22.7 billion euros (+10.9% compared to 2010).