Growing appetite for South African wine

South Africa’s Standard Bank Group said wine producers should target China‘s growing appetite but cautioned them about shifting to white wine cultivars amid a global oversupply of white wines.

Willie Du Plessis, director of agricultural banking at the Johannesburg-based lender, said China is expected to become the seventh-largest wine consuming country by 2012, with consumption increasing to one billion bottles a year.

South Africa last year exported about 390 million liters of wine, of which only 4 million liters went to China.

Standard Bank said the South African wine industry is an important contributor to the agriculture industry and also lends itself to national prestige and has an important tourism focus.

Nasdaq quoted Du Plessis as saying it is expensive to replant vineyards, noting that it takes at least four years to bring a new vineyard into production and years more to produce commercially viable wines.