China – a lost opportunity?

Just before I left London for the Languedoc earlier this month, I happened to see quite a few people in and around the Bordeaux wine trade and there was really only one thing they wanted to talk about: how The Great Chinese Opportunity slipped through their fingers.

Olivier Bernard of Domaine de Chevalier (pictured), consoling himself with a five-course lunch chez Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester (and showing just how brilliant his 1989 red and white still are), was shaking his head over the dramatic downturn in Chinese interest in the wines of Bordeaux, pointing out how many Chinese orders...