Grape expectations

Wine schools and courses provide a more rosy outlook for industry

A grape-picking trip to a vineyard in Champagne two years ago that sparked an interest in French wines has led to a sparkling career for young Chinese student Wang Qiuyun.

The 29-year-old from Henan province gave up the offer of a masters program from an American university to study wine in Bordeaux, where she was trained as a sommelier, the expert in a restaurant who selects the wine to go with the chosen cuisine.

"Initially I struggled with the language and did not have much fun studying wine. But as I gradually honed my skills and started to be able to taste and tell the difference between wines, I became fascinated by the richness and diversity of a good wine," Wang says.

"It felt like I had discovered a new world."

Oenology, a word almost unheard in China a decade ago, has become an increasingly popular major among young Chinese due to the huge increase in wine consumption throughout the country, driven by an expanding middle class and Western tastes.

And, like Wang, many Chinese students are coming to France with a strong business sense of the booming wine market in China.

Industry experts have predicted that China is likely to out-drink the United States to become the world's thirstiest nation for wine within two decades. It has already overtaken UK and Germany to become Bordeaux's largest export client.

Wang now works as an intern at Chateau Leoville Poyferre in the Medoc area where she helps maintain the chateau's official weibo, or Chinese micro blog, and translates the chateau's news releases into Chinese.

She also helps in the reception of numerous tourists and business people from China who have become regular visitors of Bordeaux's vineyards.

"The number of Chinese students going to France to study wine has grown at a rate of 30 percent annually over the past few years," says Ren Lianfang, manager at Strong Study, a Chinese education agency in Zhejiang province.

The interest in wine education in the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong has grown substantially, with enrollment soaring nearly 200 percent year-on-year, according to the Wine and Spirits Education Trust, a UK-based wine education organization.

The thriving wine market in China has not only wooed Chinese students to France, but it has also bolstered the education market as French universities and private organizations that offer oenology courses, and are struggling with a decline in domestic enrollment, look to the East.

"In France, we don't have too many French students coming to learn about wine. But in the foreign countries, the situation is exactly the opposite," says Franck Chausse, director of Cafa Formation, a private wine school in Bordeaux.

"You have a lot of countries interested in wine education because the wine business is faring well there and people want to learn more about wines," he says.

Chausse says that more than half of Cafa's students are Chinese. Five years ago, they only accounted for 2 percent.

"Most Chinese students want to work in the wine trading business. Less than 10 percent would choose a sommelier career in restaurants or hotels," he says.

Cafa offers a two-year diploma course for 9,500 euros ($11,700), and students can choose a third-year program in teaching oenology.

The oenology schools in France are also seeking Chinese partners to attract students and offset falling numbers.

Cafa has developed ties with the College of Oenology at Northwest Agricultural and Forestry University in Shaanxi province.

In 2008, Cafa opened its own school in Beijing and is planning to open another in Shanghai, according to Chausse.

Chausse says that the school is currently training teachers in France to become instructors at the school in China.

It also offers training programs for sales staff of wine trading companies in major Chinese cities, including Chengdu, Wuhan, Hangzhou and Kunming.

Meanwhile, wine distributors in France are also paying attention to wine education in China. Diva Bordeaux, a leading wine trading company, is planning to establish a new wine school with Cafa in China to train local sales staff and to promote French wines.

"Most of the time, people are very shy about wine. They don't dare to push the door of the wine shop because they don't know much about wines," says Jean-Pierre Rousseau, managing director of Diva Bordeaux.

"The purpose of wine education is to let them define their own tastes and to realize that wine is not something complicated."

Although China does not yet have its own wine experts with the repute of, say, US wine critic Robert Parker, dubbed "the pope of vineyards", Chausse says he is optimistic about the younger generation in China.

"They have the potential to reach the very top class of wine advice. They learn very fast, and what matters after that is the experience," he says.

This summer Wang is graduating from the University of Wine in Rhone Valley with a degree in wine commerce and marketing. She applied for the masters course at the University of Montesquieu-Bordeaux IV, one of the leading universities in France for oenology, but was unsuccessful.

She says competition for places was intense, with eight of the 20 interviewees coming from China.

"I can picture myself traveling to different vineyards and chateaux and getting to taste different wines for my customers," she says.

"But what's most rewarding is that I've found something that I want to do for the rest of my life."

lixiang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 08/03/2012 page18)