As a college student, Powell Yang would sometimes buy Wine Spectator magazine and then buy the wines with high scores.
Back in the 1990s, it was easier for students to get their hands on the good stuff: his local drug store, Long’s, actually stocked Screaming Eagle 1992. For $50.
“Each individual store could cater to their own audience. So that particular store had a really amazing wine selection,” he says.
But although he remembers seeing the wine there, he wasn’t enough of a wine geek at the time to buy it. That wine now sells for around $22,000, but Yang says it would have been wasted on him, as he didn’t really know very much at the time.
Today, however, he’s not just knowledgeable about fine wines — he’s a major importer in Taiwan.
A winding path to Taiwan
Yang says that after college he worked for a time for Anheuser-Busch, the beer company. A headhunter contacted him and said there was a job going in Napa Valley, and was he interested? It turned out to be Diageo, which in 2002 had a wine division.
“During my time in Napa, I worked with wineries, for big global companies and for wine.com,” he says. Later he worked for Spectrum Wine Auctions, and then headed to Hong Kong in 2013.
The market had soared in 2008 after the Hong Kong government dropped duty on wine — but then came clampdowns on both corruption and business loans, leading the wine market to peak around 2011. By 2013, the environment had become a lot tougher, and Yang moved to Taiwan in 2014.
"Taiwanese typically drink wine because their friends are doing it and it’s more or less a hip or cool thing to do,”
In 2017, he and his partners launched an import, retail and wholesale business specialising in older, rare wines from France and California.
“I was born in Taiwan — we immigrated to the US as a family in 1987,” he says.
Today, about 50-60% of his business is private clients, with the other 30-40% being represented by restaurants and fine wine stores.
But Taiwan was, and is, a much smaller market than Hong Kong. “Taiwan is just small. It has 23 million people and the wine drinking population is probably 1% of that.”
A snapshot of the market
Wine is not yet a major part of the culture. Taiwan had a government-controlled monopoly for 80 years, and only allowed foreign alcohol into the country in 1987. The monopoly was abolished in 2002 after Taiwan joined the World Trade Organisation.
Yang says the Taiwanese typically drink wine for social purposes. “They do it because their friends are doing it and it’s more or less a hip or cool thing to do,” he says. “And it’s healthier than drinking whiskey. So people don’t necessarily drink it because they understand it or want to learn more about it.”
Yet they’re also signing up for wine education in droves, though Yang says it’s often because they’re looking for people to drink wine with, rather than seeking an in-depth understanding of the category.
At the high end of town, people still prefer French wines, particularly Burgundy. But while red wines remain the most popular wines throughout the rest of the market, white wines are gaining. According to Cellar Asia, white wines had reached 10% of the market by 2020, with sales of sparkling also growing.
Steven Raidis from Raidis Estate in Australia’s Coonawarra region agrees. “Surprisingly, we have found the most success with our white wines versus what we were told about the market before entering,” he says, noting that Raidis Estate has been in Taiwan since 2018, in both retail and the on-trade. “We are a proud Coonawarra brand and so our expectation was that Cabernet would be our top seller by a big margin, but that is not the case.”
Building brands
At first glance, it looks as though finding an importer isn’t as difficult as in other markets, because there are so many to choose from. The challenge is finding a professional. It’s so easy to get a license that there are dozens of amateur importers in the market who are mostly buying for themselves — they decided it would be cheaper to self-import than to go to a store.
Fortunately, the professional importers know what they’re doing, says Raidis. “Lots of the importers have been to Australia multiple times, so we are familiar.” He says the real challenge in Taiwan is building volume.
The real challenge in Taiwan is building volume.
Another issue, at least for famous estates, is that a lot of wine ends up heading to the cellars of private buyers, making it difficult to get overall visibility in the market. Matthew McFetridge, Head of Sales Asia Pacific for Franz Haas Winery in Alto Adige, says: “I think probably 60% of the volume that I sell to Taiwan goes through private channels.”
Taiwan also has a liberal bring-your-own-bottle culture, so wine drinkers tend to bring their own wines to dinner. “Most restaurants don’t charge more than $15,” says Yang. This can make it difficult to build visibility, as it overturns the adage about brands being built in the on-trade.
But there are, of course, ways to build brands. For premium wine, connecting with sommeliers is key.
“There are only a small number of sommeliers who really know about wine in Taiwan,” says Yang. “But they’re willing to learn.”
Getting into Taiwan’s wine market
Send the Winemaker, Not the Marketer
Yang emphasises that a major mistake that he sees wineries making is sending marketing people to visit the market, rather than winemakers or owners.
“Nobody wants to see a marketing person out in the market,” he says. “It’s not the same connection. They make people feel they have an agenda.”
Travel to Taiwan
Failing to show up is also a major mistake. Yang says that too many people treat Taiwan as an afterthought. “It’s an add-on to their trip to Japan, or Korea, or China.” People in Asia recognise that Europeans and Americans need to travel a long way to visit and they appreciate it. “They feel touched. You’re giving them face. They love that.”
“As small as Taiwan is, you need to be on the ground for at least three to four days, because then you can hit the three major cities in Taiwan,” he says.
McFetridge says that he typically visits Taiwan at least four times a year. And not everything has to be formal, Michelin-star style hospitality. “We do fancy. We do casual. It works,” he says.
As for the language barrier, he says the Taiwanese are very warm and forgiving, and they’ll do their best to speak English. “If you want to have a serious business discussion, obviously having a partner who speaks your language helps.” But just tagging along with a regional body or setting up a booth at a wine fair isn’t enough.
McFetridge also regularly invites clients to visit the Franz Haas winery, because the team is happy to offer VIP experiences. This, he says, is very popular with customers.
Stay realistic
When it comes to sending wine to market, Yang advises “low expectations” to begin with. He personally will only bring in less than half a pallet of a wine to begin with, to see what works in the market.
“We’re going to start small, in the event that it doesn’t work,” he says. “Don’t damage your product image in Taiwan with a large order that has to be liquidated later.”
McFetridge says he finds the Taiwanese more open to the “geeky and the new” than are consumers from mainland China. He adds that he’s spoken with buyers from chains like Carrefour and Seven11 and says they’re typically very knowledgeable and open.
And he advises people without any existing relationships to go and order a drink at a wine bar. “Have the confidence to ask the guy or the lady behind the bar, ‘hey, who’s the distributor for this wine?’ And chat with them. I’ve had success like this.”
As for Yang, he now shuttles between California, where he’s working for Spectrum Wine Auctions, and Taiwan. His goal now is to consolidate all his international networks, and create a new fine wine network in Taiwan. He also wants to improve the marketing of Californian wine in Taiwan.
And where to visit next
While Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are already active wine markets, Yang says that, “Thailand should be coming on board soon, because they just did away with wine import taxes”.
The Thai government is seeking to boost tourism and encourage luxury travellers, and so last year it dropped its import duties of up to 60% on wine. Excise tax on wine has also been lowered from 10% to 5%. It’s now open for business and those who make it a priority now will have a first mover advantage.
Natalie Wang, founder of media powerhouse Vino-Joy, agrees. “It has become the most exciting market to watch in Asia,” she says. “Bear in mind that Thailand is already so mature and developed with the hospitality industry, so the infrastructure is very good.”
Thailand, she says, has lots of exciting restaurants, bars and hotels, as well as “a huge influx of tourists who are ready to spend, enjoy the holiday and splurge on the wine as well.”
Wang says there is also a growing local market, partly because the pandemic made people more aware of health. “Thailand is a market where spirits are very strong, and that flipped during the pandemic.”
The next frontier
Yang says that Asia is the “next frontier. People would be smart to look at it as a whole market rather than as individual countries,” he says. “Go out and spend a month there, not just a day here or a day there.”
“American wine in general is still a difficult sell in Asia unless your label reads ‘Opus One’,” he says. “The wine culture in Asia is that when you go to dinner, people don’t tend to be interested if you bring something they don’t recognise.”
It’s something he’s decided to change and is considering the best strategy. And, he says, Screaming Eagle will definitely be part of it. Though not, unfortunately, at $50 a bottle.
- Costco
- Carrefour
- RT-Mart
- Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp Although its influence is declining, it historically held a monopoly in the country's wine market
- Drinks Wine & Spirits Co., Ltd
- Sommelier Wine Expert
