A glass half full

A localized approach

Wang Shenghan, an e-commerce wine retailer based in Beijing, has an equally ambitious plan.

The 30-year-old's company, Lady Penguin, was one of the top performers on Taobao.com last year, raking in 50 million yuan in sales. She is confident of hitting 100 million yuan by the end of this year. In fact, she even said that "it would be an easy goal to accomplish".

The Beijing native, who graduated from Brown University in the US, developed an interest in wine while moonlighting at a three-star Michelin restaurant in New York. Her interest led her to spend one year learning about wine in France.

Wang later rose to fame in the virtual world after producing short videos about wine appreciation that were accompanied by hilarious narrations. In her videos, she would candidly compare the tastes of different wines to "an international hooker from Las Vegas" or "the hope of a developing country". Her videos, which are uploaded to her Sina Weibo account, have an average viewership of 600,000. She currently runs a team of 70 people that have produced 200 videos.

"I think people like watching my videos because I'm not technical or pretentious. I speak in terms people would understand," said Wang.

"Young people in China, especially those who have just started drinking wine, are tired of hearing wine terminology like terroir or tannin. That's definitely not the way to get people drinking."