Wine Australia has released a card aimed at helping the Australian wine industry engage more fully with its Chinese customers.
The Australian Wine Flavours Card is a one-page tool based on research by the University of South Australia which links an Australian wine descriptor with an equivalent taste identified by Chinese consumers.
“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 competitiveness,” said Wine Australia CEO Andreas Clark.
“The card guides Chinese customers through the tasting process using terms they understand.”
Wine Australia's global knowledge manager Anne Duncan said the Wine Australia-funded research project that provided the foundation for the card aimed to identify the terms Chinese consumers themselves use when describing Australian wine.
“Currently, wine is predominantly described using English sensory terms that may lack meaning for Chinese customers,” she said.
“The research helped 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 was developed to show these equivalent terms, and can be used by Australian wineries at their cellar door, retail wine outlets, and restaurants.
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, for example.
The Wine Australia Export Report showed that the value of Australian wine exports to China grew 66 per cent to $370 million in the 12 months to December 2015.
