A glass half full

Among those who took notice of her was Xu Xiaoping, widely considered the godfather of venture capital investment in China. With Xu's 1-million-yuan investment, Wang and two other partners established Penguin Guide, a food and drink education platform, in 2015. The next year, Wang started her own business, Lady Penguin, that focuses exclusively on wine.

According to her, most of Lady Penguin's customers are aged between 25 and 35 and come from first-tier cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou in Guangdong province.

"My customers don't have a strong preference for wines. Most of them just come with a certain budget, usually no more than 300 yuan, and let our customer service team select the wines for them," she said.

"From my perspective, wine drinking among young Chinese today is very much like restaurant hopping. They have a few favorites that they would keep returning to, but they're generally more eager to explore other options," she added.

Looking ahead, Wang is planning to develop a wine education system that is suited to Chinese drinkers. Currently, most of the wine schools in China adopt the system created by The Wine and Spirit Education Trust in Britain in 1969. One of the key differences between these two systems is that the former would feature more wine pairings with Chinese cuisine.

"The dinner table is still the most important social occasion for the Chinese. And that's also where most of the wine will be consumed. So there should be a different approach to popularizing it," said Wang.