(FT) - The bottles of Great Wall, Changyu and Dragon Seal wine line up like sentries on the shelf behind Cristián López

China is the world’s largest market for red wine, which should be enough to put it on the radar of any winemaker. But as the business seeks to recover from the Chinese government’s crackdown on corruption and lavish gift-giving, consumers are turning away from expensive French labels to “new world” exporters like Chile, the fifth-largest wine-producing nation and second-largest supplier to China.

For Chile, this is more than a sales opportunity: the hope is that the wine business can wean the country off its dependence on bulk exports like copper and agricultural commodities.

Wine appreciation is growing among prosperous Chinese. In Shanghai or Beijing, professionals meet at wine bars. Well-off couples give a bottle as a gift. At holiday times, families propose toasts with red wine instead of the fiery, high-alcohol baijiu favoured by older men.

Ten years ago, Chinese who liked the cachet but not the taste of wine mixed it with Sprite to make it go down better. Supermarkets would plastic-wrap two bottles of wine to a can of Coca-Cola as a sales promotion. A Chinese dairy executive once proudly poured yoghurt into French wine, to demonstrate the versatility of his product.