Transcription

• Speaker #0

  All right. Good morning, Charles.

• Speaker #1

  Good morning, Antoine.

• Speaker #0

  Thank you very much for welcoming us here. Unfortunately, we're not in Long Dai, but it's because of me. I told you a few months ago that I would come to Long Dai. And actually, we changed the schedule and everything. No problem. So you were more than happy to welcome us in Long Dai, but it seems like that it will be for next time.

• Speaker #1

  Another time, you're welcome anytime.

• Speaker #0

  Thank you very much. So thank you very much for welcoming us in Shanghai this time. I'm super happy to do this discussion with you. We'll talk about a lot of things because you have a crazy experience in China and about Chinese wines in general. But before that, can you start by introducing yourself?

• Speaker #1

  Absolutely. So I'm Charles Trottena and I'm the general manager of Domaine de Longue Daille in Shandong province in Penglai. So I started the adventure with DBR Lafitte, Domaine Baron de Rothschild Lafitte in 1918. And we opened the winery, the Domaine, in 2019, 2018 and 2019, sorry, in September. And now this is the sixth year of the existence of Domaine de Longue Daille. And we just released the sixth vintage of Long Dai 2022 last year in November. So before that, Arab in China in 1998 started in Beijing, where I studied Chinese for two years and had the chance to participate to... kind of MBA between the European Commission and the Chinese government about the Chinese culture, Chinese language, Chinese politics. And that helped me to better understand the Chinese culture. So it was quite early. Could you imagine in 1998 how was Beijing and China? I had the chance to see the evolution of the country over the last almost 30 years. And I went back to France for family reasons. And I came back in 2005 because I wanted to come back to China. I was working in France, had my apartment, my car, etc. But I told myself that I had to go back. It would be the last chance. And I came back in 2005. And I had a great opportunity to work for one of the biggest wine suppliers in China. called Summergate. And this is how I started my career in the wine business. So I stayed six years at Summergate and had different roles from sales to sales manager and sales director of Southern China between 2011 and 2013. And it was a great experience in terms of knowledge of the Chinese markets and to master the basis of the different channels, how works distribution in China. And at the time in the year 2000, it was a bit crazy because we were doing like 100% of growth every year. It was just the start of the imported wines. on the Chinese market. And so great experience in distribution. And then I wanted to go on the brand side. So I went to Hong Kong from Guangzhou. I was based in Guangzhou at the time. And I went to Hong Kong and to work for Negociant, which I did for two years in charge of the Guadalajara market. And I also presented a brand, a premium spirit. brand company and in charge of the Asian market for three years. And after this experience, a bit more global, I had a good friend working for DBR Lafitte based in Hong Kong. And he talked to me about this opportunity of this incredible estate. located in Penglai, Shandong province, and they would need someone like me understanding the Chinese culture and to be a bridge between... the French part and the Chinese part, and to help them to open the winery as soon as possible. Why as soon as possible? Because the project started in 2008. And from negotiating with the government to secure all the land that the project needed for the coming decades to... building the winery and the beautiful villa that you have visited I believe it took a long time of course the most important thing being from 2011 to plan the first plots of Cabernet Sauvignon and making the first cuvee of Longueuil, what wasn't Longueuil at the time but of our wine So it took a long time. And this is the spirit was to produce a great one of China, a great one of Shandong, at least. And this is what happened the 19th of September, 2019, when we opened the gate of the winery and when Baron Eric de Rothschild and Saskia de Rothschild came to China and revealed for the first time the new estate of the family, which was... in Penglai, in China, and revealing the new name, the name Domaine de Longueuil to the world. So that was quite incredible. Could you imagine when the family decided, when Baron Eric de Rothschild decided in 2008 to build their new winery, their new project from scratch in China, in Penglai? That was a bit crazy. what was the world of Chinese wine at the time in China. It was almost nothing, almost nothing apart from industrial wine, from the big brands you know maybe. But the concept of terroir and to produce a wine that you make from your own grape, respecting the local culture and the local terroir to reveal what is the essence of this place was quite new in China at the time so it was a very bold move and I believe it was the same pioneer spirit that inspired the family when they went to Chile in the 90s or in Argentina to produce a great farm from those places as well Nicole Chagua or or in Mendoza. So I think they were inspired by the same kind of, the sense of curiosity and taking the risk to rebuild a new terroir. And also producing great wines for more than 50 years from Chateau Lafitte in 1868 when James Earl Rothschild acquired Chateau Lafitte to now. And all these states acquired from the 60s, from Durand-Milon to Château-Lévenger to Château-Riosec, all this experience and the know-how accumulated all over these years help us to build this project. So it's really a kind of destiny between the family and that place, an encounter between a long history of making great wines and a new terroir. And this is Long Dai. This is the product of Long Dai, which is not a product anymore, but at the time, that was the spirit. And we're here now, and we just released the sixth vintage of Long Dai and the fifth vintage of Hu Yue, our second wine.

• Speaker #0

  Nice. Thank you very much for this introduction. It's super interesting. deep dive into some points of it but just before that um so you said you arrived in beijing in 1998 on your side yes um to study uh chinese chinese chinese culture um was

• Speaker #1

  it already in the spirit of working in the wine industry or you were doing something completely different no no because i just graduated from france okay and from uh i was very little i always wanted to go to asia okay So what happened is that... After graduation, after military service, I was one of the last incorporated in the military service in France. I went to Chinese embassy in Paris and asked them to have a list of universities that can accept foreigners to study Chinese. And they gave me maybe 10 places, 10 universities all over China. Guangzhou, Guangzhou, Kunming, and Beijing. And the only one that answered me was Beijing. Beijing. is Beijing Foreign Studies University. So I took my bike, plane, visa, of course, and arrived there. Arrived there and I started to study Chinese. And this is how it happened.

• Speaker #0

  But it must have been crazy to arrive in China in 1998. Yeah, I didn't know.

• Speaker #1

  I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything. I learned by experience.

• Speaker #0

  But maybe it's also a bit less shocking that it would be today. Because today, I feel if you are in France or in Europe, you have a vision of China. That is maybe not the same of what you can live here. What I mean is that Europeans tend to have a vision of China that is kind of behind, you know, less developed, less accessible, less everything. And then you arrive in China and it's just mind-blowing that there's this much development. I guess in 1998, it was more close to the cliché of China because it was less developed at that time. so maybe less shocking for you.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, yes. But again, I didn't know really the situation of the country, of course. But at the time, you know, we weren't so, we didn't have a criticized, so much criticized mind about China at the time. China wasn't developed. It was not a threat, you know. It's been criticized only in the last 15 years. Before, I think the French, the French were a strong... cultural mind in France. And I think China was a cultural country, like long history and emperors of China, the last emperor and so on. And China was very, very poor at the time. So of course, you know, I think this is the case for a lot of countries when the Westerns, when they consider other countries underdeveloped. Of course it was the case. But no, no, I think it It was more a cultural approach at the time. And this is, I think, when China began to develop from the year 2000 to now, that I think the image of China changed a little bit. And now, again, it changed in the last two, three years. I was a bit surprised. Again, six, seven years ago, China, for a lot of French or Westerners, was a country where we copied things.

• Speaker #0

  And that's it.

• Speaker #1

  I think now we've seen the news in France, it changed a little bit. It's not the same, but very rapidly, surprisingly, very rapidly, which is a good thing. But the wake up maybe is a bit too late. We should have woken 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

• Speaker #0

  True. But that's a good thing in the wine industry for you because then you can exchange knowledge all around the world, I guess, with the different estates that you have.

• Speaker #1

  It's totally different. We're producing a local, a cultural product. don't talk about technology. Of course, we need science and technology to produce a great wine. We need know-how, intelligence to produce a great wine. But it's before all an history of adapting to a context, understanding, respect, humility, a lot of humility. We don't arrive in new place. with thousands of years of history, with a mind that I will teach you everything. It's not absolutely the case. And the family, Saskia, our president, has a lot of respect for the villages, the culture, the understanding of what should be a great friend from Chosin Valley, from Shandong. and the time we should take to do it, to make it. And as you see when you visited Long Dai, we didn't build a Bordeaux chateau in the middle of the Chinese countryside. As a sign of respect for the Chinese culture, I think this is natural to adapt to the essence of the local terroir. And we have this beautiful grand hall, which is made with local techniques. We call it Sunmo Chego in Chinese. You know, this is all the wooden structure. which don't use any riddles or reads, but it stands by itself. And it's a technique used in the Forbidden City or other great monuments of China. And the family decided to use that technique. It's very rare nowadays to have new buildings using this technique because it's very expensive and you need very special... technicians and companies able to do that. So this is a sign also to understand the local culture and to prove and to say that we are making, represent wine from Tiochan Valley, from Panglai. We don't try to imitate any style of wine. We don't try to imitate wine from Bordeaux, which are our roots. We come from Bordeaux only to produce the best of this terroir

• Speaker #0

  It's true that the estate is absolutely stunning and when you look at it it's like a modern version of a traditional architecture and it's with like the different materials that you use and it's really a nice place, I really enjoyed visiting it um so then you said uh 2005 you're back in china uh working for summer gate um uh so you decide to come back can you so summer gate is um one i don't know if it's still the case but it's one of the biggest wine players uh in china at least at that time um can you uh deep dive a bit on uh what were your responsibility what was the chinese wine markets also at that time because i guess it it changed a lot compared to today, the local wine market.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, it changed a lot. So at the time, there was a demand for wine, especially for the premium on trade. So in the rapid development market, you have all these five-star hotels built all over China, and this international clientele who needed wines. for hospitality. And do suppliers like Summergate or ASC or Torres at the time and others that disappear now, they provided among the greatest wines, the greatest brands of the world, introduce them to the Chinese market. And my main work at the beginning was exactly that. I was in charge of the key account for the on-trades. So I was working like hotel groups like Shangri-La or Marriott or Hilton, Hyatt, etc., who opened their new outlets in China. And also development on the off-trades, retail, and then wholesale all over China. China is a... It's a big market, so you need some partners to help you distribute wine all over China. So we worked on different channels. But it's true that from the beginning, the traction was from the on-trade market, the premium on-trade market. From there, it changed a lot. We had these international companies that took advantage of this rapid growth. the Chinese market and then we had the Chinese actors coming in the year 2010 more and more players, smaller players importing wine from all over the world some more specialized specialized in one country for example importing wine from Australia or wine from the US or wine from Italy etc or specialized on the channel For example, specialized on non-trade, on retail, or doing only distribution, etc. So rapid changing markets, closer and closer to the end consumer. So the route to markets in the last 10 years tended to be shorter, shorter and shorter. And this is not even shorter because now the wineries from all over the world can... send wires directly to a retailer, to an online platform who has access directly to the end consumer. Before that, you had, you send wines to the importer, then you have tier one, tier two, retail, end consumer. So in between, you need a lot of margins to make all these people leave. So I believe it's good for the Chinese market. It's good for the end consumer. So the accessibility of great products, great wines from all over the world at reasonable price, which wasn't. the case before. But at the same time, more competition. And as you know, in China, there is kind of an entrepreneur spirit. So we have a lot of little companies competing with these big companies and giving access to boutique wineries directly to you Chinese wine lovers, and that brought a strong competition to these big players. So the market changed a lot. Some big players disappeared, some have been purchased by bigger companies, especially by Chinese companies. So it's a question of adaptation to a very rapid change of the Chinese market. I think this is the case for any kind of product in China. You can sell, you can, you could see that in the automobile industry.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. For example,

• Speaker #1

  but for, for, for the others. So for luxury industry as well.

• Speaker #0

  A lot of local brands that are emerging.

• Speaker #1

  Absolutely. So it's just a question of adapting to, to, a new mode of, distribution and give a better access to the end consumer. Never forget the end consumer. and respect the market, respect the Chinese consumer.

• Speaker #0

  And this consumer must have changed also between 2005 and today, meaning that in 2005, like the taste were maybe more on just having wines.

• Speaker #1

  Yes, yes. I think wine, you know, wine is not a cultural product for the Chinese. Chinese people don't drink wine.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. They drink tea, but...

• Speaker #1

  But they drink Baijiu. Yeah,

• Speaker #0

  Baijiu. And beer,

• Speaker #1

  basically. a bit of Huangjiu but very little, mostly in Zhejiang province. So wine is, you had wine but industrial wine, wine is a color. In Chinese it's Hongjiu. You don't even say Hongputaojiu which is red Chinese wine, you said Hongjiu, red alcohol. So wine, alcohol has a color. You drink Bai, you drink white which is Baijiu or you drink Hong which is wine. So wine has been for a long time only red in China. So we didn't talk so much about, by put out, white wine or even less rosé or other kind of wines. It was red. But that is changing now with the maturity, with the Chinese consumers. so many years and Chinese people, Chinese consumers traveling all around the world, discovering also other states all over the world, especially in big cities like Shanghai. They are open to other wines and to the diversity of the world of wine, because wine is before about diversity. So that's changing slowly, it's changing. But we have to understand that wine is not a cultural product. And we still need to make a lot of effort to explain what we do, to share this culture to the Chinese people. It's not only about the product. It's about art de vivre. Wine represents an art de vivre in French. I don't know if it's the same word in English. and I think this is this is it and I think this is what

• Speaker #0

  Chinese people expect as well you know let's let's keep maybe your Hong Kong experience unfortunately but as the time is moving I will ask you questions about that but on another episode let's go to to Long Dai so you start this Long day journey in 2019 on your side. but the project was going on since approximately 10 years at that point. What's your, like, I guess in the hiring process, of course, you discuss with DBR, with Saskia, with Eric, and like a lot of other people, I guess. But I guess you also go to Long Dai to see what it looks like at that time. Like, it must have been just like bricks and mortar everywhere. plants growing long die is a so it's close to a small village beautiful but small village kind of in the countryside of of yantai so it's really different from what you can experience in bordeaux or or in more traditional places from more long-standing wine traditional places yeah so what's your first reaction when you land in Yantai and yeah arrive at Long Dai? What a mess.

• Speaker #1

  That was in 2018. 2018, April, I remember. And the project started in 2008. And yesterday we had the beautiful testing, DBR Lafite testing with our global commercial director, Antoine. And we had a Long Dai 22 and a Lafite 08. And on the Lafite 08, you have the number 8. in Chinese characters, the pa, the pa zi, pa. Why we put this eight in Chinese characters on that vintage? Because it was the start of the project of, in Penglai, what became the Benelux after that. So that's also nice to see. If you have the chance to see a bottle of Lafite or eight, red wine, you will see this red eight on the bottle. Yeah, so... No, because I arrived, it was a bit complicated to understand what was happening. And I was really concentrated on the objective to open the winery as soon as possible. We should have opened in 18, in fact.

• Speaker #0

  Okay.

• Speaker #1

  So it was impossible. So we informed the government that it would be the year after. They were really expecting, you know, so many years. And, you know, the name. Lafite, Lafay, in Chinese and in China is quite big. It's a big name in the luxury world. I think even Lafite is more famous than far in China. Every farmer in China would know Lafite. It's quite particular in the history, but this is something else. And it was really expected. So we had to delay a year. So my really objective was to understand. what was happening and to make everything uh to put everything in power to uh launch the first cube of long die you were the year after i was living i was living in yantai okay that's the beginning so very yeah wondering you you went there and uh yeah okay yeah yeah so and your job was like calling uh suppliers government government uh getting all the license the firefighting in China is very tough to have. Firefighting. You don't do anything if you don't have the firefighting. A lot of relationship with government with the different players involved in the construction of Rongdai, of the building, the estates. And building a team. And we have a great team at Long Dai.

• Speaker #0

  Because at that point, it was just you?

• Speaker #1

  We were maybe seven, eight people.

• Speaker #0

  Okay.

• Speaker #1

  Most of the technicians, mostly people working in the vineyard because this is our main work, our main mission. But also admin, but mainly technical. And then once we opened the winery, we developed a team taking care of hospitality, so more admin people, operations.

• Speaker #0

  Need to train them on the history, I guess, as well, on how to present the wine.

• Speaker #1

  Absolutely. And building also the team taking care of the vineyard. So we were the only one to offer like a real labor contract to local farmers because we want the work to be done. We want the workers to to be loyal.

• Speaker #0

  to ensure the best quality of our wine and to obtain the best grape possible, we implemented a system like a real working contract to make them faithful to the brand, faithful to the winery. And we have now people,

• Speaker #1

  stable workers,

• Speaker #0

  who are people who started in 18 and are still here working with us. And that's also integration of the local culture into Long Dai. And it's a win-win partnership. We use their land. They agreed to give us their land, or to land, because we cannot own the land in China. And in return, we train them. We make them professional of viticulture. to reconsider our vineyard worker the same way as the other employees in the company.

• Speaker #1

  It's a very interesting place when you see that because they have a long-standing tradition of agriculture in the province. They are doing apples in the province. They have these beautiful apples. that they wrap individually in every piece. So I guess they had this mindset of taking care of the fruit and taking care of the plant.

• Speaker #0

  Absolutely. This is a very right point, because why Baron Eric chose that place at the time?

• Speaker #1

  That was my next question, so that's perfect. Yeah,

• Speaker #0

  okay. And this is part of the answer. It's true that Shandong, especially the Shandong Peninsula, Yantai, Penglai, Weihai, they have a strong culture of growing fruit orchard, apple, which is I believe the most famous fruit of Yantai still. We say Yantai Pingguo. It's known all over China. Pear, peach, cerise. Cherries. Cherries. So in fact, this is the same kind of fruit that we have in France. We are almost on the same latitude, the same climate. Latitude a bit southern France, but the same climate. You know, northern climate, temperate climate, not too far from the ocean. One of the reasons too. Why we chose that I believe is the only coastal appellation of China. Penglai. Yantai. Penglai. Most of the major appellations of China are continental. Rebe, Ningxia, Shanxi, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Attitude Wines. And we are the only renowned coastal appellation of China. And Bordeaux, Pauillac. Pauillac is very close to Sichuan. So in order to produce the kind of wine we like at DBR Lafitte, What we like is more like a refined, elegant balance. We love balance. Saskia took sort of a balance in the wine. And balance is also an art of view, to find balance in life. In many aspects, wine represents life as well. The balanced wine is extraordinary. The balance between different grape varieties. balance between the fruits and the oak, etc.

• Speaker #1

  Balance in texture, yeah. Balance in texture,

• Speaker #0

  absolute between acidity. So this is the king word for us. And I think that place, Pont-Laye, especially that little valley, Tiochambally, could bring, could help us produce the style of wine we wanted. Elegance. balance. It's not about like big wines, you know. So we have, it's a temperate climate. We have a hot summer that help us have a good maturity of our grapes, but not too hot neither, like in France, that don't overripe the grape, you know. And we have this Terra system, I think. in Choshan, thousands of terraces. Only at Longdive we have more than 600 terraces. And it's also an heritage from the local farmers over the time. It was apple orchard before that we replaced step by step by vine. And we respect that. If the farmers did that for so many times, for all along centuries, all the time, it had its reasons. And we kept that. And it gives our wine a lot of complexity. Because each terrasse produces a different grape, different vigor of vines, that will produce a different taste of wine at the end. So it's a very meticulous, very precise viticulture. Each terrasse is considered as by itself. And when we start harvesting, from early September to end of October, the technical team will go two to three times on each terrace to taste the grapes and to find out when is the best time to harvest that specific terrace. Everything is made by hand. So we're talking about really the haute couture of wine.

• Speaker #1

  point making yeah and sorry I lost my question but it was a super nice one I was more passionate into what you were saying than on my next question how do you so you told this was very interesting the part on terras because I guess it's part of how did you identify the terrors you that you have, like you arrived in 2019, it's already planted with vines at that time?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, we started to plant in 2011.

• Speaker #1

  Okay, so the team already identified the terroirs before?

• Speaker #0

  Absolutely.

• Speaker #1

  And they were relying on the farmers? Absolutely,

• Speaker #0

  because the project started in 2008.

• Speaker #1

  Okay.

• Speaker #0

  So the technical team and Olivier Trégorat, who is our... current global technical director for DBR, for the group, was involved very early, in the early stage of the project. And with Baron Eric and the team at the time, he chose the best, because we were not so many people at the time on the valley, and he chose the best plot. for the future Long Dai. And from there, you need to planify, you need to choose the varietals,

• Speaker #1

  you need to dig a lot of holes to analyze the soil structure,

• Speaker #0

  a lot of pits to analyze the soil structure. And Olivier is a specialist in geology and in pedology.

• Speaker #1

  So hundreds,

• Speaker #0

  hundreds of pits have been made because each terrace, the depths, of the source water is completely different. So we need to pay a lot of attention to that in order to choose the right rootstock and the right varietal.

• Speaker #1

  Makes sense. When we talked about your experience at Summergate, you told that one of the main drivers of wine demand was the openings of hotels and hospitality, especially in China at that time. And if we talk about... Chinese wine distribution. So for now, what we have witnessed is that Chinese wines are mostly consumed in China, and it's actually difficult to find Chinese wines in other places we've been to so far. But do you think that first that it will change, that we'll find Chinese wines around the world? And then do you think that one of the drivers of this change could be the adaptation of hospitality around the world. to this Chinese demand and to like Chinese people just traveling and wanting to have also their own wine when they travel like one of the you know one of the factor is that yeah there are French going to China for business they need to have their lafite at dinner do you think that it would be the other way around in the next few years interesting question

• Speaker #0

  I think it's a bit the contrary, was talking to a a great sommelier of Davitorio, a very famous Italian restaurant in Shanghai. yesterday during that lunch. And we're talking about that. I asked him, who is consuming Chinese wine? Who is consuming Long Dai and Hu Yue in your restaurant? And the first answer he gave me, foreigners. They don't look for Lafite. They look for Long Dai. The French, for example, please the French. We love wine.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  And we love to discover other wines. And so when you arrive in a new area, you want to discover the local specialties. So in a restaurant, a lot of demand comes from people curious about Chinese wine. It's a very important question. As I told you, wine is not a cultural product in China. So we have a mission there. And they've been consuming imported wines for a long time. But we need to... We need to make them understand who we are, what we are doing, and why. And why we chose that place. Why we are able to produce great wines in China. This is not an obvious answer. It's normal. It's normal. Even 10 years ago, Chinese wouldn't buy Chinese cars. Now it's more than 50% of the sales. I believe we will follow the same trend. But we have this mission to explain, to give them confidence in, in fact, in their own wine, in Chinese wine. And that requires a lot of personal investment from wine professionals, patients, trainings, masterclasses. And this is what we are doing, you know. And we're talking about sommeliers, and this is what they do in their outlets, in their restaurants, in their hotels, to explain what we are, what are Chinese wines, what is a wine from Penglai, what is a wine from Ningxia or from other places, you know. And it's ongoing. It's ongoing. There is still some reluctance. We can talk to even some... sommeliers or some consumers said, oh no, Chinese wine, you know, never, I drink only Burgundy, I drink only Bordeaux wines, or I drink only wines from Napa. You know, you still have, but that will change. It's changing, and I think and I hope it will be coming in the coming years, and we are conscious of that and we're going to talk to other wine professionals, to other... Chinese winery owners, they all make that effort. Take some time, but we will get there.

• Speaker #1

  We have a restaurant like that that opened quite recently in Hong Kong. It's difficult actually to find Chinese wines in Hong Kong. Not that much places serve them. But we dined in a restaurant recently and they had a full Chinese wine menu. I guess they still have... I don't even think... I think they still have... wines from France and other places, but they don't display it. It's like more of a customer.

• Speaker #0

  Chinese restaurant, no?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, Chinese restaurant. In central, the name is Holy Fook.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, I've been there.

• Speaker #1

  Holy Fook.

• Speaker #0

  I was there in February. To talk to the French sommelier.

• Speaker #1

  And actually, we were discussing with the sommelier there, and he told us that it was like when you looked at the table around us, everyone was ordering a bottle of Chinese wines. And it was like, and he had an amazing time. It was like just explaining the wines, where it comes from. They had like plenty of things on the menu. And I think it's like really working well for them to have this Chinese wine menu because it's mainly a restaurant for Westerners, for foreigners. And so they want to discover this local wine culture. They want to have the good wine with the place they order. So yeah, I guess it's the

• Speaker #0

  Black Sheep Group.

• Speaker #1

  Black Sheep Group. Great team.

• Speaker #0

  Great team. Great team. And they did the first classic work. You know, that happened. Not by accident. Not because people were asking. Because they were proposing.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly.

• Speaker #0

  And you know, and the team told me, it wasn't easy at the beginning to convince them about Chinese wine. They said, let's try. I offer you a glass. Oh, yeah, it's fantastic. Oh, please, have a bottle. So it's through an effort of... The whole chain from us producing the best wine we can, where we are, to the sommelier who can explain it. And also through all the trainings we make all around China and also abroad in Asia. By the way, we work very well in Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Japan. And we feel a good vibe. People are very curious. And it happens that we make some comparative testing with other wines of our group. of the Bière Lafite with our great Château of Bordeaux. And people, you know, they like to compare and, ah, what is the best? And we are very proud to stand up all along Lafite and Château L'Évangile and Du Hermillon at the same level of quality. It's just we are bringing something different, something unique, coming from a different place, a unique place. And people are so happy to discover.

• Speaker #1

  uh to discover uh this long die or hui you know and you know we will keep on doing uh those efforts and people people will enjoy yeah i hope so and i hope we're gonna contribute to to this as well with these uh podcast interviews that we do and with uh what we prepare on uh on chinese wines as well but yeah i really think it's a trend that will uh unlock more and more opportunities for chinese wines in the Hmm. in the next 10 years I think it's the like right place to be I hope we'll see Charles thank you very much for this interview it was an amazing discussion we are a bit past our time so sorry for that no problem I have three last questions the first one is do you have a book recommendation for me yes so you asked me the question I think a great book that

• Speaker #0

  Fantastic book that Saskia, I can send you the reference Saskia made when she took over the control of DBR and she wanted to explain the story of Lafitte. And she gathered all these old pictures and stories of her centuries up to now. And this book was awarded also the best wine book.

• Speaker #1

  by the gourmet awards i believe it was in 2022 is it is it in the in the entrance of absolutely but you know when we visited i sat so in the entrance of long die you have like this little table yes and little chair oh yes yes so i was sitting there and just going through the book and i was like damn that's an amazing book because you have like letters from robert parker saying sorry i can't attend you're tasting yes yes a lot of art chips a very nice book I will put the link in the description. I will try to find one for me as well. It's a good point. I'm writing that. Do you have a recent wine tasting that you loved? Something in your recent memory that you would recommend?

• Speaker #0

  Recently.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, can you tell us your last coup de coeur?

• Speaker #0

  Recently, last week. Peninsula, Shanghai. Great dinner with the YPO Panasia. And we have a beautiful lineup of Long Dai, Hu Wei, Lafite, Carioad. And we had Long Dai Hu Wei 19, one of the first vintages of Long Dai. Lafite, Carioad 19, same vintage. And beautiful Lafitte 98 and Lafitte 05. It was incredible testing. Again, East-Miss-West and 80 people, very YPO people, one lovers. And they had a great time.

• Speaker #1

  You have a very difficult job, Charles. Very difficult. Very, very difficult. This is a good part of the job. This is a good part. Plenty of other things. Thanks. And who is the next person I should interview?

• Speaker #0

  There's a great guy also doing great things in China. A friend of mine, Bertrand Christo, who has a lovely estate in Yunnan province. One of the first estates in Yunnan called Xialing. Also, this is one of the estates we exchange with service people and French. Been in China for... more than me like 40 years, probably the 80s. Very nice person and doing a very very nice wine from from Yunnan so that could be a good choice.

• Speaker #1

  100%. Thank you very much. Count on me to try to do this interview in the future. Thank you very much, Charles, for sharing this story of yours and sharing the story of Long Dai as well. It was really nice to have this perspective. If you guys like this interview, don't forget to share it, like it, subscribe. Try to find a bottle of Long Dai. Come to China and visit Long Dai in the Shandong province. It's a beautiful place to go. and a lot of things to discover there so it's not that far from Shanghai actually if you land in Shanghai absolutely two hour plane something like that one and a half hour and then we're close to the airport so easy trip super easy and very good place thanks again Charles thank you Antoine thank you very much see you soon ok cool merci Charles ça a été c'est vrai clairement c'était cool