The wine club in Shanghai to tempt fine palates скачать в хорошем качестве

The wine club in Shanghai to tempt fine palates

(18 Oct 2013) The consumption of wine in China is expected to grow around 40 percent by 2016. The country is the fifth largest consumer of wine in the world, so it's little wonder that clubs promoting fine wines are opening up, despite the slowing economy. A large selection of the finest French wines in Shanghai can be found at ASC Fine Wines in Shanghai's former French Concession district. China imports about $1 billion of wine from EU countries annually and accounted for 8.6 percent of European Union wine exports last year, according to EU figures. France was the biggest exporter to China, selling wine worth 546 million euros ($744 million US Dollars). ASC is China's largest wine importer and distributor. With 4.5 million dollars of investment and operating in China since 1996, the company has now opened this exclusive members club to enhance knowledge about their product. The club was dreamt up when China's economy was booming and when prices of famous French wines were rocketing. But now the economy is slowing down, and even worse for sales has been the launch of Chinese President Xi Jinping's austerity campaign banning government officials from luxury spending which has lead to a significant drop in premium alcohol consumption. For ACS CEO John Watkins this was just a small part of their business sales. While they did see some impact it was not as big as some other companies have suffered with the decrease of luxury spending. Last year the company had higher sales at lower price points, while high end Grand Cru Clase and the demand for other fine wines dropped. He explains how the austerity measures affected wine consumption: "So you have government to government, state-owned enterprise to government, state-owned enterprise to state-owned enterprise and then you would also then have whether it was real state developers or entrepreneurs that were then hosting government officials about different kind of projects that where going in in their cities or provinces, so the policies that were announce back in April 2012 and again late last year or early this year, where aim at reducing this kind of extravagance and this kind of waist and so companies that had built their businesses, there were many specially Chinese companies that had built their businesses on servicing this type of entertainment are the one that has suffer the most." These clients are enjoying a dinner in the Wine Residence. The evening resonates with echoes of the extravagant Shanghai lifestyle of the 1930's. These "wine aficionados" are attending the presentation of an app for pairing top Chinese cuisine with exclusive foreign wines from Europe, South Africa and America. Some of the suggested pairings on offer this night: deep-fried prawn paired with German Robert Weil 2011 and a top delicacy for Chinese gourmets, braised sea cucumber, matched with Spain's Rioja Marques de Riscal 2007. An exclusive dinner like this would have rarely been seen around a wine bottle not too long ago, says wine expert Chantal Chi. "I remember eight years ago when we participate in a event like this there is probably 10% Chinese and all the others are non Chinese faces and now you can see like tonight is the opposite so Chinese they start to appreciate the wine and once they get access they enjoy it because Chinese are very gourmet persons," Chi says. Shi Xiaoming is a senior executive of a global company and a wine enthusiast. He believes while some parts of China are still attached to the traditional consumption of Chinese liquor, the rice wine locally known as 'baijiu', the trend is changing: Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...