Chinese merchants and investors are planning to snap up much of the acclaimed 2009 vintage of Bordeaux wines, according to this piece in the Guardian. The article says Chateau Mouton Rothschild and Lafite-Rothschild have been called “tipple of choice for your thrusting Chinese industrialist”:
Top wines have become a prestigious gift among business people in China; a bottle of famous claret is now an essential part of entertaining government officials, Chinese merchants said. Among the middle classes, Bordeaux is also seen as a sophisticated and healthy alternative to Chinese wines, which can contain up to 40% alcohol.
The piece quotes a Hong Kong investor, Sam Yip, as saying ”Everyone in China is thinking Lafite,” he said. “It is seen in the same light as Louis Vuitton, Prada and Gucci.” I can’t say I’ve ever been offered a glass of Lafite at a Chinese banquet, but I can see that it would sit rather nicely on the kind of table described to me by one Chinese chef, at a feast an entrepreneur threw for local government officials (read into that exactly what you will), alongside the abalone, shark’s fin, bird’s nest and humphead wrasse. That particular banquet, as described to me, cost the equivalent of about £8000 for one round table – so I’m sure a few grand on a bottle of wine would have been acceptable. Perhaps they were drinking Lafite anyway – the chef I spoke to only knew about the menu and the cost of the food.
Any of you got any tales of the bling factor at Chinese banquets? Or of expensive Bordeaux wines in China?
You can hear me talking about eating shark’s fin (or not) 
