(TDB) - Drawing an analogy between coffee and wine, American wine critic James Suckling believes that wine can be made as popular as Starbucks coffee in China providing consumers are granted access to quality wines.

Speaking to dbHK prior to his annual Great Wines of the World event in Hong Kong, the flamboyant wine critic revealed a slew of plans that will mark his biggest and most ambitious move yet into mainland China’s vast wine market, with an end goal of creating a Starbucks-esque wine drinking culture.

Leveraging on China’s sprawling e-commerce giants such as Tmall.com and JD.com, as well as the country’s growing middle class, the wine critic believes there’s now a real consumer market in the country, different from a few years back when the market went bust because of wine speculation.

“The goal with China is that if someone wants to try a glass of wine for the first time in their life, it better be good quality, so they taste it and they like it so they understand”, he stated.