Since the start of this summer, chilled white wine has become a fashion trend in Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang and other provinces across China.

For decades, the Chinese wine market has been characterized by a clear preference for red over white, with white wine long existing as a niche supplementary category. However, in the past year or two, the industry tide has reversed markedly. The domestic white wine market has steadily expanded, reaching 72.555 billion yuan in 2025, showing an independent upward trajectory. At the same time, wineries in core production regions have ramped up white grape planting and expanded white wine production lines, ushering in a concentrated phase of capacity growth for domestic white wine. So it seems that white wine in China has truly turned “red.”

Stepping outside the narrow domestic market perspective and placing this consumption shift and capacity expansion within the global wine industry landscape, it becomes clear that the counter-seasonal rise of Chinese white wine is by no means an accidental fluctuation in a regional market. Rather, it is the combined outcome of three forces: the global resonance of wine consumption trends, the iterative evolution of China’s domestic consumption structure, and the restructuring of global wine supply and demand.

Looking at mature wine-consuming markets worldwide, white wine has never been a supporting player. It accounts for over 30% of global wine production. In mainstream markets such as Europe, the Americas, and Oceania, white wine consumption is roughly on par with red wine; in some tropical and temperate countries, white wine’s share even surpasses that of red. Over the past few decades, China’s market has long deviated from this global mainstream structure. The core reason is not consumer taste preferences but the bias in early market education. In the initial phase of the domestic wine industry, marketing efforts focused heavily on red wine’s health benefits and business attributes, while white wine lacked systematic popularisation. Data from Germany’s Geisenheim University show that even today, a large number of Chinese consumers still default to red wine as the first choice, with a persistent cognitive gap in wine categories.

Compared with the mature and stable white wine consumption in European and American markets, the growth in China’s white wine market is far more explosive, driven by consumer changes tailored to the local context. Data indicate that in economically developed regions like South China and East China, white wine penetration has risen year by year, with young consumers accounting for over 60%.

Over the past decade, domestic red wine production capacity has shrunk significantly, while the competitive landscape for white wine has remained relatively loose. Given this supply-demand gap, domestic wineries expanding white wine production is a rational choice to seize a blue-ocean niche. However, from a global industry competition perspective, blind capacity expansion also harbours risks. Domestic production regions need to avoid the industrial pitfalls that mature overseas regions once encountered, and also heed the new problems arising from the earlier “sauce-aroma baijiu fever” in China—this is not something that can be resolved simply by the logic of white wine turning “red.”

First, consider our own situation. At present, most domestic white grape expansion is concentrated on popular universal varieties like Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, with a lack of indigenous specialty white grape varieties. Compared with highly regionally distinctive wines such as Germany’s Riesling and New Zealand’s Sauvignon Blanc, domestic white wines still lack iconic signature products. Moreover, white grape cultivation in China started late, and the supply of high-quality wine-making white grapes is insufficient. Some producers even resort to using red grapes to make white wine to compensate for raw material shortages, resulting in uneven product quality. While European and Oceanian regions boast centuries-old terroir matching and low-temperature winemaking techniques, domestic white wines still show a notable gap in quality consistency.

Although sales are rising, domestic consumers’ understanding of white wine sweetness grading, terroir differences, and drinking occasions remains weak, far behind the level of red wine awareness. If production capacity expands rapidly without corresponding market education, supply-demand imbalances are highly likely, repeating the overcapacity and price wars seen during the previous sauce-aroma baijiu boom.

In the short term, a moderate expansion of white wine production by domestic wineries can help absorb incremental local demand, optimise the domestic wine product mix, and reduce import dependence. In the long run, China’s wine industry needs to rely on its diverse terroir resources to craft distinctive white wines that suit Chinese palates and carry indigenous terroir labels, forging a differentiated path away from both Old World and New World producing regions. The balance of China’s wine industry is tilting—the era of red wine dominance is gradually receding, but the rising Chinese white wine cannot succeed merely on the logic that it has turned “red.”