Wine in China, the next big challenge ?

Wine in China was always going to be a complex market to crack — high demand, fierce counterfeiting, a constantly shifting regulatory environment, and consumers whose palates and preferences were evolving faster than most brands could follow. In 2017, when this article was first written, the JD.com and Penfolds partnership represented the state of the art: platform credibility as the primary weapon against fakes. A decade later, the battlefield has shifted, but the core challenge has not changed.

JD.com and Penfolds: How It Started

The JD.com and Penfolds partnership announced in 2017 was a landmark moment for wine e-commerce in China. JD.com became the first online retailer to carry the full Penfolds range for the Chinese market, and Penfolds treated China as its second home market after Australia. The rationale was clear: in 2014, 11 million bottles of wine were sold on JD.com alone. By 2015, that number had doubled. Penfolds was already a best-seller in China — the partnership was about protecting and scaling that position.

The counterfeit problem drove the decision as much as the growth opportunity. Wine in China attracted fake products at every price point. Cheap packaging, re-labelled bottles, and fraudulent provenance claims were undermining consumer trust in the category. For Chinese consumers, JD.com’s authentication guarantee was the solution — if you bought from JD.com, you knew what you were getting. The brand partnership leveraged that trust rather than trying to build independent retail credibility from scratch.

Cross-Border Wine Tax: What Actually Happened

The tax changes referenced in 2017 did not slow Chinese wine consumption in the short term — the market continued to grow through 2017, peaking at approximately 1.9 billion litres annually. What the tax environment did do was reshape which products were viable at which price points. Australian wine specifically became caught in a different tax issue: the trade dispute that led to China imposing tariffs of over 200% on Australian wine imports between 2020 and 2023, effectively shutting Penfolds and other Australian producers out of the Chinese market for three years.

Those tariffs were lifted in March 2024. The market has been rebuilding since, but Australian wine’s dominant position from 2017 has not fully recovered. French, Chilean, and domestic Chinese wines filled the gap.

Wine E-Commerce in China 2026

The wine e-commerce landscape in 2026 is structurally different from 2017:

Counterfeiting in 2026: Technology Shifts the Fight

Platform credibility remains the primary tool against wine counterfeiting, but the methods have advanced. In 2026, the leading approaches include:

• NFC tags and blockchain provenance: brands like Penfolds, Château Lafite, and several premium Burgundy producers now use NFC-enabled labels that consumers can scan to verify provenance and chain of custody. JD.com and Tmall both offer blockchain authentication integration for premium brands.
• Private domain communities: brands that build WeChat communities of direct buyers can communicate product authentication directly and create a social layer of verification. A community member who buys regularly and shares tasting notes is a different kind of brand protection than a platform badge.
• Short-form content education: the most effective anti-counterfeiting strategy for premium wine brands in 2026 is consumer education. Douyin and Xiaohongshu content that teaches consumers how to identify authentic products — label details, capsule characteristics, colour depth — builds a knowledgeable consumer base that is harder to deceive.

The wine category is also seeing the rise of credible domestic Chinese wine from Ningxia and Xinjiang. These are not counterfeit risks — they are genuine quality products that have displaced some imported wine volume. Premium domestic wine now accounts for approximately 24% of the premium wine market in China, up from under 10% in 2017. Foreign wine brands need to compete with domestic producers on quality communication, not just on provenance.

Our China e-commerce team helps wine and premium food brands establish authentic, protected positions on Chinese platforms. For industry discussion, r/Marketing_China has threads on F&B brand entry. Our partners at Ecommerce China Agency publish wine and beverage e-commerce benchmarks annually. Follow our LinkedIn for case studies from our wine and lifestyle portfolio.

About Fashion China Agency

Fashion China Agency is a Shanghai-based digital marketing agency specialising in fashion, luxury, and lifestyle brand entry into the Chinese market. We help international brands build awareness, drive e-commerce revenue, and build communities on Xiaohongshu, Douyin, WeChat, and Tmall. Our team of 40+ China specialists covers content strategy, KOL management, paid media, e-commerce operations, and live commerce. Founded by Philip Chen and Olivier Verot, with offices in Shanghai and Paris.

Philip Chen is co-founder of GMA (Gentlemen Marketing Agency), one of China’s leading independent digital marketing agencies. Over 12 years working with fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands on China market entry. Connect on LinkedIn.