Exporting wines to China not easy but possible

Kevin Sherwood is the founder and CEO of Van Ruiten Family Winery China, which has been importing wines from California for a few years and is now starting to see some success. The company vineyards in the United States in Lodi – a town near San Francisco and the center of  a region that grows more winegrapes than Napa and Sonoma combined – have been growing wine grapes for twenty years and making wine for about ten years. 

Sherwood said there is far more to trade with China than putting wine in a container and shipping it across the Pacific. You are almost assured it will "just sit and get ruined" on the docks if you haven’t met with people and established relationships, he said. "You can’t send anything over there you aren’t willing to lose," he said. 

Lodine News.com reported that Tie Zhang, president of U.S.-China Business and Culture Association, said in an email that wine is the fastest growing business sector in China and the market for wine has seen double-digit growth in the past decade.

 

Zhang said Van Ruiten’s success in China is due to the personal touch its executives have conducted their business with and how they have been willing to fly overseas and meet with potential partners.