Wine sales escalated on Chinese Singles’ Day 2019

As China’s national spirit, baijiu sales continually top the Singles’ Day shopping spree, but this year both wine and brown spirits saw growth on major online platforms.

Alibaba’s Tmall platform announced the top 30 shops that generated the most drinks sales during this year’s Singles’ Day. Out of the 30 shops, the majority of them focused on baijius, but 10 of them are from other categories.

New this year were two non-baijiu shops in the top 10 best performers, namely the official shop of Moët Hennessy and online wine retailer Lady Penguin, a social media and retail channel founded by Wang Shenghan, a wine influencer better known by her nickname ‘Lady Penguin’.

This implies a younger Chinese generation is showing a growing interest in wines and spirits other than baijiu and are purchasing them too.

This year, Tmall Global worked directly with 50 internationally renowned wineries around the world to supply direct sales to their customers. They included Lafite, Latour, Mouton and Cheval Blanc, Tenuta dell’Ornellaia, Almaviva and Penfolds.

Altogether they featured over 300 labels, approximately around three million bottles, during the shopping festival. The imported wine volume is three times bigger than last year. Shopping for brands is one of the major trends for Chinese consumers in wine purchasing.

In view of the statistics announced by Jingdong, another major e-commerce platform, the transaction for alcohol products enjoyed growth on Single’s Day. The sales for imported wine, beer and spirit had a four-fold increase on last year. The sales generated by the wine category in the first two hours of the day had already surpassed the total daily sales of Single’s Day. The most popular wine brand was Penfolds, followed by Great Wall, Lafite, Changyu and Yellow Tail.