James Suckling and COFCO launch wine app in China

American wine critic James Suckling has launched a Chinese wine app with COFCO Wine & Wine, with the aim of turning his translated ratings into a, “benchmark for buying wines and informing the wine trade and consumers in China”, he says.

A screen grab of the wine app

Featuring more than 10,000 tasting notes by Suckling, video content and tasting reports from the wine critic’s eponymous website jamessuckling.com, the app is a collaboration between Suckling and China’s biggest wine importer COFCO Wine & Wine.

“My expectations with the app is that my ratings will become the benchmark for buying wines and informing the wine trade and consumers in China,” Suckling told dbHK.

“I decided to do an app in China because most wine communication is done by smartphones. And an app seems the best way to communicate about my ratings and fine wine available in China,” he explained.

The country has close to 670 million smartphone users, the highest in the world. That’s double the entire population of the US (321 million).

The app, available on iPhone, iPad and iPod, is expected to give a boost to expand COFCO and Suckling’s reach on the mainland, according to COFCO Wine & Wine.

“We have a team of 10 wine educators to train our distributors; and we have an expansive product management team to organise more than 1,500 tastings and events a year. But China is a huge market, and the reach of our education trainings and events is limited. We want to provide our distributors and wine consumers a simple and easy tool, as well as more contents as reference,” says Castle Li, general manager of COFCO Wine & Wine, when asked about the intention of launching such an app.

The two have partnered up to launch Great Wines of the World and Great Wines of Italy event series in mainland China this year.

The upcoming Great Wines of Italy event in Beijing is scheduled for 5 December, and more information about the event can be found here.