Chinese official data showed that wine imports totaled 3.353 million hectolitres in 2022, worth $1.435 billion. After peaking at 7.872 million hectolitres in 2017, China's wine imports in the past decade have been declining, reaching $2.789 billion in the same year. Imports peaked at $3.691 billion in 2018 and have been on a downward trend since then.

With both imports and values down more than 60% from their peaks in 2022, Chinese wine faces a similar dilemma. In 2022, the wine industry seemed to have "bottomed out", but the rebound did not come.

Opinions are divided on whether the wine industry has "bottomed out". From the analysis of the source, we can find that the key lies in the absence of wine consumption scene.

The imported wine cultivates the domestic market through the wine education system, in order to demonstrate the "high-end" by controlling the complicated wine elements such as etiquette, region, origin and flavor characteristics. Chinese wine in a long period of time, most of the stage of following the trend, has not formed a perfect consumer education system.

The imported spirits, however, is quite different. From the small sip of Europe and America to China's "cheers", imported spirits enterprises quickly adjusted the sales strategy, soon in the Chinese market foothold, market share climbed steadily.

Back in 2012, Castel proposed to "make wine the French way and sell wine the Chinese way".

It has been trying to explore the right direction, explicitly proposing to "learn from baijiu" and building channels. In 2023, Castel proposes to let customers make money on red wine in the same way that they do on baijiu.