Has the transplant taken for Chinese investors in Bordeaux? After the first years of euphoria, the Chinese thirst for French grape varieties has sometimes turned sour and some areas have been fallow for several years.
Since 2008, 150 estates have passed into the hands of Chinese investors, ie 3% of national wine-growing land. But some investors have finally been confronted with many difficulties in the management of their new assets: bankruptcies, neglected vines and cellars, unpaid staff…
A castle in Bordeaux, for example, was taken over by Chinese investors at the end of the 2000s. The expenses there were initially lavish. But since Covid, funding from China has dried up. The vines are abandoned, there has been no harvest for three years.
Unpaid staff
This is just one case among others, according to Corinne Lantheaume, the CFDT union representative for the sector. She defended several employees wronged by Chinese owners, including Hélène, who was not paid for months. “We no longer move, we no longer spend and we do with everything we have without additional purchases”, she laments.
Opposite, the silence of the bosses, even the absence of interlocutors, poses a problem. “You have to send a bailiff’s order to liquidate the company,” says Corinne Lantheaume. “Except that, since we don’t have a legal representative, who do we do it to? In China? A little complicated… But that was what was looming. I find that we find ourselves very helpless,” laments the trade unionist.
Legal action
Some Chinese bosses have not been able to manage this wine heritage with very specific codes. Other properties have closed following fraudulent deals.
In 2018, French justice seized a dozen properties from the Chinese group Haichang, on suspicion of money laundering, forgery and use of forgery. Among these possessions, Château Sogeant, a few kilometers from Bordeaux, and its vines, abandoned for four years.
The vines of the Château Sogeant estate, seized by French justice in 2018, have been abandoned for several years.
Without being able to prove it, the unions also suspect certain investors of having come to facilitate the counterfeiting of Bordeaux wine in China. This is what Corinne Lantheaume thinks: “For some, I will not be taken away from the idea that the fact that they owned a label in Bordeaux allowed them to put this label on any quantity of wine, since no owner was going to challenge the counterfeit.”
Emotions to China
Of the 150 properties bought by the Chinese, at least a third have been sold, or are currently lying fallow. The impact caused by these bad transplants is moving as far as Beijing. China is now imposing new controls on its Chinese châteaux in Bordeaux which export to its territory.
TV report: Adeline Percept and Thomas Chantepie
Adaptation web: Antoine Michel