Chinese Fake Brandy Market is Booming – HK$1000 for €1 Bottle of Grape Brandy

The Bottle is King, or so the big houses would have us believe. So much so that selling I year old grape brandy, bought for less than 1 euro a bottle,  set in some very fancy glassware and presentation boxes and then sold for HK$1000 (about £90). At least that is the price of one brandy offered by a big Chinese distributor.

Is it surprising that the market is flooded by fake products? One Cognac negoçiant suggested that as much as 80% of the Chinese market is fake and if that is so, then there is a lot of room in the market for the real thing.

Clearly the industry is suffering with these figures, as more real cognac could be shipped in place of the fake products. So what is the industry doing about it? Well not a lot, or so it seems.

Clearly with big pressures on cognac stock, the big houses probably don’t even care, as they are selling all that is available at the moment. The real problems will come when the market turns away from cheap and fake products and turns to other products such as whisky – as was the case in Taiwan. That too was once a big cognac market!

Brandclassics believe it’s what’s inside the bottle that’s important, and our carefully selected range of exceptional cognacs reflects this view.