Latest data from the General Administration of China Customs shows that China's total annual wine imports in 2025 reached approximately 207 million liters, a year-on-year decrease of 26.85%; the total import value stood at about 1.418 billion US dollars, with a decline of 10.90%. The imported wine market is contracting in scale, characterized by a simultaneous drop in both volume and value.
Specifically, in 2025, China's imports of bottled wine (2 liters and below) reached 132.922 million liters, a year-on-year decrease of 19.62%, with an import value of 1.2878913 billion US dollars, a year-on-year decline of 10.27%. Imports of bulk wine in China hit 65.2031 million liters in 2025, falling by 39.79% year-on-year, and the import value was 59.7553 million US dollars, a year-on-year decrease of 26.02%. Both bottled and bulk wine imports saw double-digit declines in both volume and value.
Meanwhile, the other side of the market scale is on the rise. As imported wine faces mounting pressure, the overseas expansion path of Chinese alcoholic beverages has become increasingly clear. In the first half of 2025, the total export value of Chinese alcoholic beverages rose by 21.5% year-on-year, presenting a trend of weak imports and strong exports. Amid the overseas expansion of Chinese alcoholic beverages, plum wine has stood out with its unique flavor and become a focal point of global attention. Among them, Meijian Plum Wine, launched in 2019, is China's top plum wine brand. Data from Shangpu Consulting Group, a third-party research institution, indicates that from October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2025, Meijian Plum Wine has retained the top sales position in China's plum wine market for four consecutive years, with cumulative online sales exceeding 41,793,000 bottles, solidifying its status as China's No.1 plum wine brand. (Source: Chongqing Daily - "Meijian Leads the National Plum Wine Market Share: A Case Study of Chongqing's Consumer Goods Industry's Blockbuster Road")
Meijian Plum Wine has also delivered an outstanding performance in the international market. To date, it has been successfully exported to the mainstream consumer markets of 33 countries including France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, emerging as a shining calling card for China's consumer goods industry going global. Its cumulative global sales have surpassed 150 million bottles, with a total of 280 million users served and brand reach exceeding 1.2 billion people worldwide. From a global perspective, the current world plum wine market presents a tripartite competitive landscape: Choya Plum Wine commands a global market share of 18.3%-28% with cumulative sales of over 300 million bottles, securing its position as the world's No.1 plum wine brand; Meijian Plum Wine ranks second globally; and Suntory Plum Wine is the world's third. (Source: China Daily - "Exploring the Overseas Journey of Chinese Wines: Meijian Makes an Appearance at the FBIF 2024 Food and Beverage Innovation Forum")
How did Meijian Plum Wine become a blockbuster brand?
On the one hand, the cumulative sales of Chinese baijiu dropped by a staggering 42.14% in the four years prior to 2019. On the other hand, several leading enterprises in the baijiu industry boast decades or even a century of brand heritage, with massive production capacity and strong financial strength. Against this backdrop, the prospect of engaging in head-to-head competition with these industry giants is far from optimistic. Rather than fighting a tough battle in a saturated market, it is better to carve out a new blue ocean. Pingzi Planet Group, the parent company of Meijian Plum Wine, identified the new alcoholic beverage sector as this blue ocean. New alcoholic beverages are cross-border products combining baijiu and soft drinks. From 2016 to 2019, China's low-alcohol new alcoholic beverage market surged by an astonishing 106.8%.
Plum wine was a representative category of China's new alcoholic beverages at that time, yet the market was characterized by a pattern of "having product categories but no leading brands".
To seize the first-mover advantage in this new category, Meijian Plum Wine played its first card: quality-oriented development. In terms of raw material supply, Meijian Plum Wine has established four core plum planting bases in Dayi (Sichuan), Eryuan (Yunnan), Zhao'an (Fujian) and Puning (Guangdong). It selected 10 plum varieties with the optimal flavor from nearly 200 types as brewing raw materials. Meanwhile, to ensure the ripeness and integrity of plums, all fruits are required to be hand-picked and undergo six rounds of manual selection. In terms of production technology, Meijian Plum Wine pioneered the original fruit brewing and steeping process in the entire industry, extending the fermentation period from 90 days to 180 days. It also built the world's largest earthen jar wine cellar for aged plum wine, housing 100,000 jars of aged plum wine.
Top-tier enterprises set industry standards. Later, Meijian Plum Wine took the lead in formulating the Plum Wine Vintage System and the group standard for Plum Wine, filling the gaps in the domestic plum wine industry.
Unlike traditional baijiu, new alcoholic beverages such as plum wine emphasize not only product quality but also the atmosphere and style of drinking. Meijian Plum Wine played its second card: scenario-based positioning, which integrates the product into consumers' key daily life scenarios.
For example, the Chinese people have a custom of drinking wine with meals. Low-alcohol plum wine, with its sweet and sour taste, relieves greasiness and neutralizes the spiciness of food perfectly. Consumers have such practical demands, yet most catering establishments in China lack professional ice-making equipment.
To address this issue, Meijian Plum Wine has invested its own funds to provide ice machines for partner restaurants, enhancing consumers' food and wine pairing experience by serving iced plum wine. In Chengdu, it even launched the promotion of "Free Iced Meijian with Hot Pot".
At the same time, Meijian Plum Wine has also launched a "Family Feast Gift Box" containing custom wine glasses and reunion recipes. This "Scenario is Brand" strategy has elevated Meijian Plum Wine from an ordinary consumer product to a cultural carrier.
By upgrading product quality and creating exclusive consumption scenarios, plum wine, a new beverage beyond traditional Chinese baijiu, has gradually gained recognition from a growing number of consumers.
Seizing the favorable momentum to further consolidate its market position, Meijian Plum Wine played its third card: large-scale development. To this end, Meijian Plum Wine has built China's largest modern plum wine brewing factory and developed a fully integrated industrial chain capacity for plum wine covering plum cultivation, technological R&D, brewing production and brand management.
Through large-scale development, Meijian Plum Wine has reduced upstream procurement costs, diluted management costs, and endowed terminal products with stronger price competitiveness. On this basis, Meijian Plum Wine played its fourth card: mainstreamization. Specifically, it actively expands the market through various channels, driving plum wine, once a niche category, to become a mainstream choice in the alcoholic beverage market.
Mainstreamization requires making the product visible everywhere to form a brand encirclement effect. Offline, Meijian Plum Wine is placed in the most prominent positions in major mainstream supermarkets in China such as China Resources Vanguard and Hema Fresh. Online, Meijian's advertisements have occupied the homepages of leading e-commerce platforms including Tmall and JD.com for a long time.
Today, plum wine has become a mainstream category in China's new alcoholic beverage market. Meijian Plum Wine has not only firmly established itself as China's No.1 plum wine brand but also risen to the position of the world's second-largest plum wine brand.
