Italian wine in China, hurdles and potentialities.

Abstract

I became interested in this topic while I was in China. When I had the chance to meet a Chinese wine distributor was astonished when I realized that among the numerous bottles of French wine there was almost no Italian one. That was a clear indicator of the situation of Italian wine in China. So, I started researching why an important wine producing country like Italy wasn’t able to replicate in China the success it has worldwide. During my research, I became more and more aware of the potentialities of the Italian wine and how there were ill-used during the first twenty years China opened its market to foreign wines. While the French wineries entered the market almost immediately and started promoting their wines, Italian wineries decided not to give importance to this market. Now they are still paying the price, in 2016 Italy had only 5% of the total wine imported market share while France had 44% of it. The research has been divided into three parts: the first part will give a global presentation of the wine industry focusing on Italy as wine exporting country and on the Chinese market attractivity. The second part will present the choice of internationalization, especially for small and medium wineries, the biggest obstacles and the possible solutions. The last part is the result of the interviews I conducted with the people working in the sector, Italian and Chinese, the major problems they encountered and their insights about how to change the current situations.