Buyers of Australian wine in China now have access to expert, independent and professional reviews, rating and commentary on Australian wine in their own language and on their favourite social media platform. They can now make buying decisions based on information and ratings from a source they already trust.
Leading Australian wine critic Jeremy Oliver has some positive news for Australian wine companies seeking to engage with the China market. His startup Australian platform, Oliver’s Wines, has just opened on WeChat, China’s favourite social media platform with more than 1.35 billion monthly users.
Oliver has a long association with Chinese buyers of Australian wine, having visited the country 65 times, published six books in Chinese and presented four top-rating seasons of online wine educational television. He has also hosted countless wine events in China for government and private entities. Now that the Chinese government has removed trade barriers to Australian wine, this timing is particularly important given that many Australian wine brands are seeking to re-engage with Chinese buyers.
Oliver is also keen to engage with the 1.3 million Australian residents of Chinese origin in their first language. ‘Oliver’s Wines is becoming a genuinely bilingual platform that will enable Chinese people of whatever level of ability in English to better understand and buy from Australia’s leading wine producers’, he says.
The WeChat presence for Oliver’s Wines combines an Official Account page with an H5 store. WeChat users are now able to search for the Oliver’s Wines official account page, which provides a series of links to different features within the Oliver’s Wines platform, hosted on the H5 store within the WeChat environment.
Oliver’s Wines is shortly to expand into the secondary market for wine and will be listing premium offerings of old and rare wines from Australia and overseas. While the company will not be exporting wine to China in the immediate term, China-based buyers of well-cellared bottles of Australian classics such as Penfolds Grange, Penfolds Special Bin Numbers and Henschke Hill of Grace will be able to purchase from the Oliver’s Wines WeChat store to deliver to an Australian address. Oliver’s Wines can also set up professionally managed cellaring facilities in Australian cities for Chinese buyers.
‘While we aren’t directly exporting to China, our WeChat presence enables us to connect with and become a source of independent opinion and rating for all things Australian wine to Chinese people, here and in China itself. We look also forward to providing information about and access to the best-cellared bottles of classic Australian wine in Chinese’, says Oliver.
About us:
About Jeremy Oliver:
Jeremy Oliver is the most outspoken and independent of Australia’s wine critics and his country’s most influential wine presence throughout Asia. He was listed in the World’s Top 20 Wine Critics by the 2018 BWW competition and tastingbook.com and is rated by Sopexa as one of the World’s Top 100 Palates.
Since the publication of his first book, Thirst for Knowledge, in 1984, he has written a current tally of thirty books and has contributed hundreds of articles to publications the world over. He is particularly known for the nineteen editions of his best-selling book, The Australian Wine Annual.
The first non-Chinese online KOL (key opinion leader) active in China for wine, he is the first westerner to have published a wine book in China in the Chinese language – with six now in total. He staged four seasons of top-rating online TV to engage with and educate the Chinese market about wine.
Having hosted hundreds of events in Australia and all over the world, Jeremy Oliver is also regarded as Australia’s leading wine presenter and wine ambassador. He is deeply committed to Australian wine but is not afraid to be critical of it when the occasion demands.
Contact details:
For further information, please contact Jeremy Oliver at jeremy@jeremyoliver.com or on 0411 866 384.