Wine Australia launches ‘wine flavours card’

In its quest to educate Chinese wine consumers, Wine Australia has launched a new one-page card full of Australian wine descriptors with the equivalent Chinese taste counterparts.

Blackberry preserve… or Chinese hawthorn?

The latest development in Wine Australia’s Chinese Lexicon Project follows on from the bilingual tasting ‘wheel’ which was launched last year.

Wine Australia’s CEO, Andreas Clark said the Australian wine flavours card “presented an exciting opportunity” for the Australian wine community to better engage with their Chinese customers.

“China is a key market for Australian wines and to be able to talk with these customers about the sensory aspects of our wine in a more relevant way will help our community’s competitiveness,” he said.

“With the Australian Wine Flavours card we can now help guide Chinese customers through the tasting process by using these identified terms, which will help the sector engage more effectively and make drinking our wines even more enjoyable.”

Wine Australia’s global knowledge manager, Anne Duncan added that it aimed to identify the terms that Chinese consumers themselves use when describing Australian wine.

“Currently, wine is predominantly described using English sensory terms that may lack meaning for Chinese customers. The research helped to bridge this gap by asking regular drinkers of imported wine in China to describe Australian wine during blind tastings. The same wines were also described by sensory experts using common Australian wine terms and the descriptions were then linked.

“The Australian wine flavours card helps wine businesses identify descriptors for Australian wine that are easily understood by Chinese wine customers,” she said.

“For example, if an Australian winemaker was to describe a Cabernet as having hints of blackberry preserve, the card shows that a Chinese customer would more easily identify this flavour as dried Chinese hawthorn. The winemaker could then suggest this to the customer on tasting their wine to facilitate better engagement with the wine.”

Australian wine businesses can also register their interest to receive a free copy of the Australian Wine Flavours Card.

China continues to be a market of growth for Australian wine and Chinese customers are important for Australian wine businesses looking to increase their exports. The recent Wine Australia Export Report showed that the value of Australian wine exports to China grew 66% to $370 million in the 12 months leading up to December 2015.