Jeweler takes ambitious plunge

Purchase of french vineyard is businessman's attempt to diversify red wines in China

As Shen Dongjun describes it, he smelled a deal on the horizon.

The 42-year-old, who is the owner of more than 300 jewelry shops around China under the brand name Tesiro, was once a regular customer at a bar at the heart of Bordeaux, a port city in southwestern France renowned for its high quality wines.

At the bar, he tasted a glass of wine from the vineyards of Chateau Laulan Ducos in Jau Dignac Loirac, and he says he loved the fragrance and bouquet so much that he paid a visit to the vineyards shortly after. He made friends with the chateau owners, who said they wanted to sell the lot.

In February of last year, Shen bought 22 hectares of the Cru Bourgeois estate in AOC Mdoc for an undisclosed sum, though it's estimated for about 100 million yuan ($15.84 million, 12.39 million euros). In the words of the businessman, it was his crowning moment that he calls his "Scent of a Chateau".

"Never had (the chateau owners) thought of selling it to a Chinese," Shen says. "It is such an adorable treasure that they wanted it to be taken by a man who really appreciates and understands fine wine."

Shen isn't alone among the Chinese wealthy who both appreciate fine wines and want to invest in wineries. Six established Bordeaux chateaux have been bought out by Chinese investors in recent years in the wine-producing area of Medoc, home to around 1,500 vineyards including Chateaux Lafite-Rothschild, Latour and Margaux.

In recent years, Chateau Laulan Ducos has gained a reputation for producing high quality Cru Bourgeois. Now, the wines from these centuries-old vineyards of Medoc will be exclusively sold to markets in China.

"I want Chinese to drink the best wine at a reasonable price," he says.

The entrepreneur says he spent six years looking for a winery in Europe, the United States and Australia before purchasing Chateau Laulan Ducos partly because he was fascinated with Western cultures and wine. He says over the years he gradually grew from a connoisseur to a budding investor.

In replicating the high quality wines, he says he currently employs most of the chateau's staff.

"We don't make changes to the original wine-making techniques and we obey the rules of French wine culture," Shen says.

But Shen has also injected new vitality to the chateau. He invited what he believes are better winemakers who had worked at Lafite-Rothschild and bought better oak barrels. When Albert II, the king of Belgium, visited the Museum aan de Stroom in Antwerp in May of 2011, he reportedly loved the taste of Shen's wine, which made Shen proud and excited.

"Why not let the wine collected by a king become a product available to Chinese?" he said he thought at the time.

Wine from Chateau Laulan Ducos was mostly popular in France, the US, Belgium and Japan but in September 2011, it was made available in Chinese markets under the labels The Cuvee Prestige (2,380 yuan a bottle) and The Prestige Royal (3,580 yuan a bottle).

Shen says the market in China, where more and more drinkers have opened their arms to wines from France, has been better than he expected. Revenue from the chateau reached 2 million euros thus far; revenue in 2012 is expected to exceed 10 million euros.

To meet the fast growing demand in China, Shen says he is selecting wines from other vineyards made under the supervision of Laulan Ducos' winemakers. He believes once Chinese wine lovers learn to accept and appreciate the reddish-brown wine, all of France will be busy making Cru Bourgeois for China.

"A fashion trend grows fast in China. When people see others drinking it, they will follow. In the West, people ask what others don't have. In China, people have to have what others have," Shen says.

He says he once conducted a survey among 40 Chinese women, giving them a hypothetical situation in which "there are three guys - a wine drinker, a beer drinker, and a liquor drinker - and they are basically the same. Who would you choose as your husband of the three choices?"

The majority of the women, he says, chose the wine drinker, which to some extent helped Shen make up his mind to invest in wine.

"It actually is a reflection of one's sentiment and a choice of lifestyle," Shen says.

The jewelry tycoon, whose Tesiro brand is based in Nanjing and under the umbrella of Belgian Eurostar Diamond Traders, says wine and jewelry share a lot in common in the eyes of consumers.

"They are all imported goods. Chinese used to wear gold, but now more diamonds; Chinese used to drink liquor a lot, but now more wine," he says. "I got into the two industries when they were both growing in China."

Shen calls both jewelry and wine mental products because they bring joy to people on happy occasions such as weddings, ceremonies and banquets. He wants to add his own twist of cultural value to his wines and has created the slogan "To live is to share" for his wines.

He's also trying to spread the news about the wines from Laulan Ducos on online platforms such as Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

"For me, Weibo is both a medium for advertisement and cultivation," he says.

The new chateau owner is such a fan of Sina Weibo that he mentioned it at least five times during a one-hour interview recently. He is currently being followed by more than 1.9 million Sina users.

He says he still spends 90 percent of his energy on his jewelry businesses each day but that he is preparing to author a book on Bordeaux wines to be published later this year. He will also be a wine columnist for Global Entrepreneur Magazine, a Chinese-language publication, in the next few months.

But the sun hasn't yet set for Shen.

"If possible, I'd like to buy another chateau. I've never stopped hunting for a new one," he says.