"The people in Bordeaux have always been very adept at aligning themselves with the new market," Ross said. "I think focusing on China is a natural progression for them and they make that transition pretty seamlessly."

The filmmakers sought to capture the fervor, whether it was for Bordeaux's 2010 vintage, which was being called the "vintage of the century," or for another bottle from the region.

One Chinese wine enthusiast the film documents is a woman who tells the story about how she lost patience at an auction in Hong Kong. The auctioneer only got to a HK$700,000 ($90,260) bid for a Chateau Lafite bottle of wine when the woman suddenly raised her paddle and bid HK$1.5 million.

The film documents a bell curve of Chinese buyers' loyalty to Bordeaux wines. These days, growth in China's wine consumption continues to grow, but more so at home than abroad.

Total revenue from sales of Chinese wines reached $129 million in second- and third-tier cities in 2012, surpassing sales of foreign wines for the first time by both volume and value, according to a report by the China Alcoholic Drinks Association in Beijing. Predictions say China will become the seventh-largest wine buyer in the world this year.

"If a dozen mainland Chinese started to buy everything in the [Bordeaux] market, very soon it only takes a few people to corner the entire market," Jeannie Cho Lee, a Hong Kong-based Korean wine critic and Master of Wine, said in the film.

Another interview subject in the film gives a taste of China's thirst for wine, saying that the whole production volume of the entire world would not be enough to satisfy the Chinese market.

"This is not a polemic film. This is not me saying, 'Oh my god, the rise of China. Everybody watch out, the Reds are coming.' That wasn't the intention," said Ross, who was born in Hong Kong in the 1950s and partially raised there before he moved to Australia. "I wanted people to walk out of the film and for it to trigger the analytical faculties in people's brains."

carolineberg@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 09/06/2013 page11)