End of golden era for Chinese investors in Bordeaux wine

SAINT-MARTIN-DU-PUY, France — After over a decade of snapping up Bordeaux wine estates, buying into a dream of elegant living in France and good earnings in their home market, many Chinese investors are now selling up.

Capital controls back home, softening Asian demand for wine and the underestimated costs of running French estates have combined to push the once-enthusiastic buyers from China towards the exit.

Chateau Latour Laguens in 2009 was among the first Bordeaux vineyards to be bought by a Chinese company, convinced its wines would bring in handsome dividends on China's domestic market.

More than 200 other estates in southwestern France followed.

Owner Daisy Haiyan Cheng, heir to the Longhai International group, was originally full of ideas for the neo-Medieval building — a tasting room, a boutique, luxury guest rooms.

Today Chateau Latour, with its rising damp and its bat colony — the only occupants — is up for auction. The starting price, without the vines, is just 150,000 euros ($162,000).

Other estates have recently lost their Chinese owners too.

In May, the French authorities confiscated nine chateaux acquired in the 2010s by Chinese magnate Naijie Qu, founder of the Haichang conglomerate, after he was convicted of corruption.

In 2022, the chateaux of Golden Rabbit, Imperial Rabbit, Great Antilope and Tibetan Antilope disappeared from the Bordeaux map.

The four estates — thus named by owner Chi Keung Tong, much to the ire of people in Bordeaux — reverted to their original French titles when the head of Hong Kong's SGV Wines sold them back to French investors.

Many other chateaux are up for sale for peanuts, explained Li Lijuan, an estate agent and Asian market specialist at Vineyards-Bordeaux.

She said Beijing's decision to impose strict controls on capital had dealt a blow to a market already undermined by an overproduction of Bordeaux wine.

"Chinese people can't invest abroad any more because their money is stuck in China," said Li.

About 50 Bordeaux chateaux are currently up for sale, she said.

Other disappointed owners are waiting for the market to pick up so they can offload their investments.

Buyers are so scarce that some chateaux are selling