In today’s Daily Wine News electronic newsletter I read about the huge success of Hanging Rock wines in China (www.hangingrock.com.au). When we visited the winery in July last year, Andrew, who manned the cellar door at the time, told us about this venture. At that time the order was out but the wine was still in Hanging Rock’s storage. We tasted the Hanging Rock Shiraz wines at that occasion (see my blog entry from September 2007), discussed wine tastes around the world, how they could differ and how difficult the Chinese wine market was.
Hanging Rock winery, Macedon Ranges Wine Region, Victoria
I am delighted to hear therefore that everything went according to the plan. The Daily Wine News cited John Ellis, CEO and chief winemaker of Hanging Rock as follows:
“We believe that this is probably the largest premium wine order ever sold into China by a small Australian producer. Apart from the sheer size, the complexity was mind boggling. We had 5 variations of wine type and vintage plus two bottle sizes, spread across four importers to be identified on their particular selections of the five wines. All in all we had to produce and translate into Mandarin, 36 different back labels. In the process we learnt that there are several ways to write ‘Hanging Rock’ in Mandarin.”
Congratulations John! Great stuff.
Hanging Rock vineyard, in the background the “hanging rock” Photo taken in July 2007
This success is great news for all the small family-owned businesses around Australia. It shows again that also difficult markets can be cracked by boutique vineyards. Hopefully the Olympics will have an additional effect on exports to China and further stimulate the wine industry. Given that stocks of Australian wines are down, the 2008 vintage promising regarding quality but maybe down on volume, we might even expect a price rise for grape prices.
The Man from Mosel River 