Japanese sake pours into China as domestic consumption shrinks

The biggest world market is Japan's next door, what a fortunate fate it is. Thanks for generous neighbours open hearts, Japan is saved.

If anyone is ever in Shanghai, hunt down an Australian Baijyo infused Shiraz, yes you read right, baijyo with shiraz, brand is Penfolds. Absolutely intoxicating, in a good way.

There are good prosecco coming out of Japan, it's time Japanese winemakers and traditional sake brewers get together to create something new, like the Australian.

The biggest world market is Japan's next door, what a fortunate fate it is. Thanks for generous neighbours open hearts, Japan is saved.

It has nothing to do with generosity and everything to do with the desire to consume.

How ironic, the Chinese are always talking bad about Japan but they're the biggest fans of Japanese products and are the ones who are keeping the industries going!

How lucky for China that its people are more able to afford to purchase quality Japanese products, and luckily for China they are just next door. Japan is a wonderful neighbor making China fortunate indeed.

That growing middle class is some 800 million. Got to tap that market.

"Others have found the higher price points of sake harder to sell on shelves as "a 2,000 yen bottle of sake becomes 5,000 yen in China."

Not much Japan can say or do on this, until they drop the 900% or so tariffs on rice imports. Japanese rice, I'm sorry to say, is not at all better than all of its Asian counterparts' rice, much as people here like to think and pay for it. It's been proven time and again through blindfold taste tests that they cannot tell the difference between newly harvested "Koshihikari" from Niigata and rice from another area, or another nation. You just say it is the former, despite it being the latter, and you get the eyes rolled back, delayed "Umai!" after being put in their mouths.

Madden: "How ironic, the Chinese are always talking bad about Japan but they're the biggest fans of Japanese products and are the ones who are keeping the industries going!"

Yeah, and despite how much people here hate the Chinese and grumble about them bombarding Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and other cities and shopping areas, they depend on and look for them to be saved. Door swings both ways, my friend. At least with China, they have a choice. If Japanese companies chose not to deal with China, they'd cease to exist.