Diner’s Diary | How to buy a French chateau: seminar lures Chinese at Vinexpo Hong Kong fair
Mandarin speakers dominate the audience for a talk on purchasing a Bordeaux winery, and no wonder, with 200 French wine estates in Chinese hands already; prices start at US$3.5 million but you could get that back in three years
Every week property broker David Lawton is contacted by a handful of would-be Chinese clients. “They all say the same thing – ‘I want a chateau’,” says the chairman of WI&NE, a network of specialists based in Bordeaux, southwest France, who handle all aspects of investing in French vineyards. In the past decade, 200 French chateaux have been bought by Chinese investors, he says.
And no wonder, when the value of Bordeaux wine estates goes only one way: up, by 1-2 per cent a year, he says. While prices start at €3 million (US$3.5 million), Lawton says: “If you know how to sell wine in China, then you will make your investment back in three years.”
He was speaking at a seminar at this week’s Vinexpo Hong Kong, a wine and spirits fair. The three-day fair features nearly 1,500 exhibitors from 30 countries. Most of the three dozen people in the room spoke Mandarin, the language of China, and some took notes throughout the two-hour talk by a panel that included Kelvin Li Yuqi, a Bordeaux chateau owner, Hong Kong-based accountant Danny Po Chun-wong of Deloitte, as well as French architects, oenologists and lawyers involved in WI&NE . (The network’s name stands for “wine invest and new experts”).
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The Chinese are not the first foreign investors to put their money into Bordeaux chateaux; in the 1970s some 70 estates found Japanese buyers, but only about 25 of them are still in Japanese hands.
Two years ago Li, the chairman of Austchi Dragon International Group, a wine trader, bought Chateau Segonzac in Saint-Gènes-de-Blaye, a Right Bank winery in Bordeaux. The estate is across the Garonne River from such famed wineries as Chateau Lafite Rothschild and Chateau Lynch-Bages.
He says Chateau Segonzac’s value has shot up because he is neighbours with Alibaba’s Jack Ma Yun, who purchased Chateau Perenne in Blaye Cotes de Bordeaux the same year as Li. (Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.)
If you know how to sell wine in China, then you will make your investment back in three years
