Those contacted by AFR Weekend also point out that “Chinese-owned” was a blunt reference used for any winery with links to the mainland.
Take the Yarra Valley’s Seville Estate, which was named winery of the year by James Halliday in 2019. It was labelled “Chinese” by whoever compiled the list even though its owner, Wang Yiping, is an Australian citizen, who lives at the winery in country Victoria. He might have been born in China and be ethnically Chinese, but as Beijing does not allow dual citizenship, he can only be Australian.
The chief winemaker at Seville Estate, Dylan McMahon, says he feels awkward having to explain this to people. “Plenty of customers said to us ‘you didn’t tell us you were Chinese-owned’,” he says.
McMahon says he took at least a dozen calls from concerned customers and used the opportunity to explain how things had changed for the better under the Wang family’s ownership.
“Our full-time staff members have increased from three to 10 and we’ve employed at least another 12 casuals,” he says.
McMahon, whose grandfather founded the label before selling it in 1998, says Wang has invested about $12 million buying and upgrading the winery. It now includes accommodation and a restaurant and has undergone an extensive program of replanting the vines.
“The previous owners did nothing. They were just treading water,” he says. “These guys are heavily invested in the winery and the local economy.”
McMahon says being named on the list has had only a small impact on sales, but he’s still shocked at how quickly it went viral.
“It just felt like a kick in the guts. We were just coming out of the COVID lock-down and then this happened,” he says. “I was blown away by the traction it got and how quickly it escalated.”
Part of that escalation can be attributed to the list being shared widely on Facebook, before being picked up by news.com.au and The Daily Mail.
“The long list shocked many Facebook users, with dozens unaware of just how many Australian-based companies weren’t actually Australian-owned,” wrote news.com.au.
Although the article did point out that the wineries employed “Aussie workers” and that the owners were not responsible for “Beijing’s tactics”, the headline was less nuanced.
“Aussies urged to boycott 41 vineyards actually owned by Chinese firms,” it said. It then asked readers through an online poll if they would be boycotting Chinese products at Christmas.
The Nine Network’s A Current Affair ran an equally jingoistic story on the subject with the online headline; “The push to boycott Chinese products over growing tensions”.
Jason Yat-Sen Li says the treatment of these wineries is “deeply concerning”. Dominic Lorrimer
For Fuller from Kilikanoon in South Australia, the idea of being “Chinese-owned” is not straightforward. In pushing back against calls for a boycott, Fuller notes that while the winery’s parent company, Changyu, is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, its largest shareholders are actually European.
One of these is Italy’s Reina family, which owns the Disaronno liqueur brand, while the next largest shareholder is a European bank. These two hold around 43 per cent of the stock in Changyu, which Fuller points out has no Chinese government ownership.
The bigger point made by Fuller to those who raised concerns was that Kilikanoon, under its current ownership structure, employs 32 staff in and around the Clare Valley and supports a further 40 local growers.
And like Seville Estate, it is seeking to grow the business. It has plans to increase the number of cases produced by 80 per cent over the next five years to 180,000.
These growth plans were formulated when about 30 per cent of Kilikanoon’s sales went to China and its mainland-based parent would have played a big role in distributing the additional cases.
That plan has since been junked but the expansion is continuing.
Fuller says South Korea has emerged as a very promising export market and domestic sales have stabilised, although he’s concerned about a second wave of xenophobia sweeping the industry.
“The list must be circulating again as we’ve had a few [previously loyal] customers cancel orders,” he says. “It’s just not as simple as saying we are Chinese.”
This is certainly the case for another on the list, The Swan Wine Group and its Auswan Creek label. News.com.au conceded after publication in an “editors note” that Auswan’s owners “are naturalised Australians who have surrendered their Chinese citizenship and Auswan Creek is, consequently, not owned by the Chinese”.
Despite this, the label was further criticised for being levied tariffs at the lower end of the range – 107 per cent. There’s no official reason why this was the case but wineries that filed the requested paperwork and co-operated with anti-dumping investigations, as Auswan did, received the lower tariff levies.
Regardless, the tariffs effectively doubled the price of Auswan’s wine in a highly competitive market and since they were imposed, the company has exported almost nothing to China.
Jason Yat-Sen Li, a corporate adviser, says winegrowers feeling the need to justify their links to China is typical of the experience of Chinese Australians in all areas of society over the past year as relations with Beijing deteriorated.
“When your cultural background is tied to a country that is framed as an enemy it creates an environment of huge distrust,” he says. “And the really concerning thing is that it is eroding our social cohesion”.
Li, who ran as a Labor candidate at the last federal election, fears this distrust will become part of an unspoken bias within society and make it harder for Australians with Chinese heritage to be accepted.
“It’s deeply concerning and makes things doubly difficult for Chinese Australian winegrowers who are also hurt by the punitive tariffs imposed by the government in Beijing,” he says.
Backlash against China wine tariffs hits local players - The Australian Financial Review
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