Red Obsession Page #4

coming from the West.

They've made a lot of money.

I've dealt with people

who have done things

like blown $42 million on

building a private wine club.

It's because it's viewed

as being civilized,

as understanding Western culture

and as bringing it

together with Chinese ideas.

When they buy the wine,

they buy the wine as a

symbol of their status,

as a symbol of what they

have achieved in China.

There's different ways

of marking ourselves out

from the rest of the herd

and one of these is a

bottle of Lafite, you know.

And it really sets their stage.

It gives them position,

it gives them face,

it gives them a way of

presenting themselves

as being knowledgeable

about Western wine culture

in a very safe and comfortable way.

Peter Tseng is

a wealthy industrialist

from Shenzhen in South China.

He is recognized internationally

as the most successful

entrepreneur in his field.

His vast wine collection is acknowledged

as one of the finest in the world,

and is valued at

upwards of US$60 million.

Peter made his

fortune as a manufacturer

in the pleasure industry.

George Tong is

listed as one of the power elite

by 'Hong Kong Tatler' magazine.

He is vice-president

and executive director

of Wong Hau Plastic Works,

one of the largest doll

manufacturing companies

in the world.

Will you play with us?

Well, I started collecting

wine around 2003,

so it's about eight years already.

It seems like a long time,

but actually it's very young

if you look at a

collector's point of view.

When I first visited Bordeaux,

I was like a little child -

I'd known Mickey Mouse a long

time, for a few years already,

I'd known Donald Duck,

but I'd never been to Disneyland.

And they have so many different areas -

there's the Adventureland,

there's the Tomorrowland,

there's the Frontierland,

so there are different

areas that I can explore,

and every area there's

so many attractions.

Cheese!

The number of Chinese people

who were down there tasting

the wines was extraordinary.

One chteau I went to

said that 400 Chinese

visitors came in September.

I mean, this is extraordinary -

no chteau gets that in any month.

We were very lucky to be

the only chteau in Bordeaux

visited by President Hu Jintao, in 2001.

I remember, I was 15.

I saw him from far away,

surrounded by many bodyguards.

But I tell people when I do dinners,

"You know, President Hu Jintao

visited Chteau Margaux in 2001

"but, at that time, he was

only the vice-president.

"And then he drank some Margaux '82

"and he became the President of China!"

A lot of Chinese, actually.

For now three years in Bordeaux,

we have a lot of Chinese

people very interested in wine.

But not exactly in wine

- just in two labels,

two or three different

labels and just it.

They just look for this wine

- Lafite and Latour.

In the Chinese market

today, quality is important

but brand name

recognition is everything.

An element I found

difficult to deal with in China

is this branding aspect.

As a French person and

as a younger wine amateur

we've always treated the wines

from where they come from.

Before the brands, these

wines are pieces of land

and have been pieces of land

where wine has been produced

for the last 600, 700 years,

as long as we can go back in history.

Probably in China

more than in any other countries,

I try to take the wine

amateur the other way,

to bring them from the brand they knew

to the land that started everything.

And this journey is

very important for us.

When foreigners come to China,

they go into a Chinese

restaurant, you open the menu.

Oh, my God, there's, like,

a hundred things on it,

they're written in squiggly writing

and you're not quite sure what it means.

So, as a consequence,

most people dealing with that situation

order the same dishes over again -

the sweet-and-sour

pork,

the fried rice, the fried noodles.

It's easy, it's what's famous,

it's what they understand.

And, for a Chinese person coming

to wine, it's the same thing.

Funny labels, funny names

- how do you understand this?

Wine has this incredible problem -

it's very difficult to

enter into by externals.

So what do you do when a

subject's difficult like that?

You have to go by famous brands.

And the Bordelais have

done an awfully good job

of marketing and promoting themselves

as the premier wine brand in the world.

All five of

the first-growth chteaux

have achieved spectacular

brand recognition in China.

But there is one

that stands head and

shoulders above the rest.

Theories abound

as to why Chteau Lafite

has been able to penetrate

the Chinese market

so successfully.

I think the secret of Lafite

is in the soil by itself.

There is a style,

there is something

coming, vintage by vintage,

and when we have the possibility

to taste some old vintages of Lafite,

all the time there is

something by the nose

which is Lafite style.

Yesterday a customer of mine

told me, because I asked him -

every time I ask, "Why

especially Lafite?" -

and they say, "Because in

China we think that Lafite

"is very good for the health

of ladies, for the skin.

"If you drink Lafite,

you have beautiful skin. "

Anyone who remembers Hong Kong

gangster movies of the '90s -

what did the big guys call for?

In China, as

well as in most of Asia,

it's still a very hierarchical society,

which means that the opinion leaders,

their opinions matter a lot.

Whatever purchases they make

or whatever brands they favor,

it trickles down to

the rest of the society

almost effortlessly,

and without a huge marketing effort.

So, did Lafite make a huge

marketing effort in China?

No, not in the beginning.

Numerology

plays a significant role

in the day-to-day

life in China.

Luck and prosperity are believed to flow

from the right combination of numbers.

And the number 8 is the

most auspicious of all.

In 2008, Lafite made a small

change to their bottle -

placing the Chinese number

8 just above the label.

Was it purely marketing? Perhaps.

Was it a longer-term strategy to say,

"We are being more sensitive

to the Chinese culture

and trying to understand the market"?

That could be, you

know, a deeper message.

The day that

came out and it had

the number 8 on top of the bottle,

we were with a Chinese

customer for lunch,

and we passed him the news

article and I said, you know,

"What do you think? Is this

just rampant commercialism,

"or is this significant?"

And he read the whole

article very studiously,

pushed it across the table, and said,

"This is now the most valuable

bottle of Lafite you can buy.

"Because what you're doing

is giving luck, fortune...

"... you're giving the lucky

number 8 to someone to say,

"you know, 'This is how

much I respect you. '"

So, even though Lafite

'82 is 60,000 a case,

this is actually

significantly more of a gift.

Sales of Lafite

2008 soared overnight.

There was one point when a

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