Asians' growing love of wine is an inexorable force despite predictions that the spectacular Chinese-led boom of 1998 will not be repeated, the organizer of a popular wine fair said here.
"Three years ago, demand was very strong, but artificial," Vinexpo Asia-Pacific president Jean-Marie Chadronnier said while visiting Japan this week.
"After this boom in 1998 and 1999, sparked by the discovery of the health benefits of wine, it started to spread in a more structured manner in China and in all of the Asia-Pacific. "There is a slow, but inexorable increase in the consumption of wine."
Among the emerging new wine drinkers in Asia, Chadronnier said Hong Kong was a pioneer, but the figures were distorted by heavy redistribution of the product to China. Japan was also among the top few, with consumption at about three litres a person each year, albeit a far cry from the 45 liters each person drank in France each year.
"When you think that in the 1980s it was not yet one liter in Japan and it's been predicted at four liters for 2005, you quickly see the potential," Chadronnier said.
Taiwan and Singapore are also important areas for consumption. Asia represents some 10 percent of French wines uncorked in a total estimated annually at US$6.1 billion.
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