Taste test

Wen Yufeng, the head of the Student Wine Association at Tsinghua University, says the association has been cooperating with Wine in University and the Wine and Spirits Education Association in Britain to organize lectures and activities regularly.

"The association aims to enhance communication between Chinese and international students in terms of wine culture and other related issues, in turn improving their competitiveness on the global stage," says Wen, a student from Tsinghua's school of economics and management.

According to Li Xiaohang from the Shandong Technology and Business University, the university's wine association is currently home to 300 students who frequently participate in monthly wine-tasting events, lectures and competitions. The institute also hosts a monthlong marketing competition every year.

At Binzhou Medical University in Shandong province, the wine association often holds wine label design contests as well as a festival about wine culture every September, says Geng Kangqi, who is studying wine engineering there. Members of the wine association also visit local wine estates in the spring and fall.

An online survey of over 10,000 wine consumers in 2015 by Grandview Institution, a Chinese think-tank, revealed that most of the respondents aged between 18 to 35 drink wine because they believe it is good for the health and associate it with "being sophisticated". For those aged between 18 and 25, 38.7 percent said that they preferred wine over other drinks because of its taste.