China Economic Review
Charting China’s changing economic terrain · Since 1990
Grape expectations
December 7, 2009
In January, Bem in Bordeaux will launch its executive Wine MBA program in Hong Kong, in partnership with the University of Hong Kong’s School of Professional and Continuing Education.
Jacques-Olivier Pesme, a Bem Wine MBA professor, said the program, identical to the two-year global course based in Bordeaux, is a response to surging demand from Asian executives keen to understand one of the world’s most complex industries.
China became the world’s 10th largest wine market in 2005, and is expected to maintain that position as both demand and domestic production increase.
The Financial Times quotes Steve Charters, professor of champagne management at Reims Management School, who said: “China is probably the fourth, fifth or sixth biggest wine-producing market in the world. It has come from nowhere in 15 years. The Chinese wine market is going to change the wine industry substantially in 25 or 30 years’ time.”