The Times: “12 (or 6) is the number of bottles of fantastically fine vintage claret (or, possibly, dismally mundane bottles of table plonk) consumed in a private room of the Huafa private members’ club in Zhuhai.
There are two very distinct versions of what happened around the table that night in mid-January. Wine investment around the globe may depend on which is the more credible.
In one version, Zhou Shaoqiang, the general manager of the state-owned Zhuhai Investment Holdings Group, hosted a full-bore knees-up for a select gang of local finance officials and state-owned bank executives. In a show of baronial largesse, Mr Zhou poured some of the world’s finest wines down his guests’ necks.
As the collection of emptied Latour and Haut-Brion bottles swelled, so did the bill, with the cost of booze alone hitting somewhere well above the £8,000 mark by the time the party started to wrap up and the Chinese taxpayer (via Mr Zhou’s state-owned company wallet) picked up the tab. The Huafa club, of which Mr Zhou is thought to be a member, has only five private rooms: each comes with a minimum charge of £1,000. As Chinese internet users have pointed out, the cost of those officials’ Premier Cru hangover was the equivalent of an annual white-collar wage.
All of this might have remained Zhou’s little secret, except that one of the diners, a senior local official called Chi Tengfei, snapped a picture of the impressive row of empties, posting the evidence on the internet with the faintly sozzled message: “Drank 12 bottles this evening. What am I going to do tomorrow?”
So far, so outrageous. The Chinese public has all but run out of patience with lavish abuse of the state coffers by officials and state-run companies. Xi Jinping, the incoming president, is well aware of this and twice now has called for a big show of thrift. No more opulent banquets, no more pricey booze has been his mantra and recent weeks have suggested that some were taking it to heart. Including, it seems, Mr Zhou.
Because, after a two-week inquiry by the Zhuhai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, a second version of the evening has emerged. In it, Mr Zhou did, indeed, host a banquet, but he was ever so responsible about it. Before the evening began, he had made arrangements with the Huafa club to waive its minimum charge and, when the wine list was brought around, he ordered only six bottles of the cheapest red they had — a dreary draught costing about £18 a bottle. The six bottles of extraordinarily good Bordeaux names were brought — empty — to the table so that the guests could “study great wines from the club sommelier” by staring at empty bottles.
The dinner itself was a staid affair of simple dishes. The only reason the bill was paid by the State, it has since emerged, was because Mr Zhou had forgotten his cash. He rectified that by coming back two weeks later (just before the inquiry’s results were announced) to settle up from his own pocket.
Chinese internet users find this second version of events less plausible than the first, but is their scepticism justified? There is a great deal riding on the answer. China, as everyone in the high-end wine trade knows, has become a monstrously big buyer of the great vintage names. A sizeable chunk of that appetite arises from a tangle of business and bureaucratic relationships where gifting and largesse are the currency.
Mr Xi’s edicts about frugality have already hurt the share price of Moutai, China’s biggest domestic liquor brand. If he really means business, and business dinners more resemble the second version of Mr Zhou’s dinner than the first, the top-end wine market might feel a bump, too.”
via The party may be over, but the hangover is only just beginning | The Times.
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