In China’s e-commerce landscape, Taobao and Tmall, both operated by Alibaba Group, remain among the country’s largest and most influential online retail platforms. Taobao began as a C2C marketplace, bringing together vast numbers of small sellers and long-tail products, while Tmall developed as a brand-focused B2C platform, attracting official flagship stores and authorised retailers. Together, they form a comprehensive retail ecosystem that spans everything from mass-market consumption to premium branded sales.
By scale, the two platforms remain one of the most important hubs of traffic and transactions in China’s online retail market. Public data show that Taobao’s monthly active users are approaching 1 billion, while Tmall hosts more than 1 million brands and merchants. Their combined annual gross merchandise value has long remained at the trillion-dollar level. Among China’s major general e-commerce platforms, Taobao and Tmall together still account for more than 40% of the market.
Within the broader alcohol category, wine is one of the more representative segments on Taobao and Tmall. Over the past decade, as cross-border e-commerce and brand flagship-store models have matured, a growing number of overseas wineries and wine brands have entered China through Alibaba’s retail ecosystem, making e-commerce an increasingly important channel for wine distribution.
Against this backdrop, the platforms’ red wine bestseller list and dry white wine bestseller list offer a useful snapshot of consumer behaviour, reflecting to some extent the purchasing preferences of China’s mass-market wine drinkers.
The rankings suggest that large international brands continue to wield strong influence in the premium segment. At the same time, several domestic Chinese sweet wine brands have carved out a place on the charts, underscoring the resilience of local products in the mass market. In the white wine category, some international labels that have spent years building their presence in China continue to enjoy strong consumer recognition.
A brand’s commitment to e-commerce, along with the sophistication of its online operations, also appears to shape its performance on the rankings. Some companies have strengthened their online sales capabilities by building their own e-commerce systems or acquiring specialist online operators, while others have benefited from the exposure and sales generated by leading wine bloggers and influencer-run stores.
And while white wine has been gaining momentum in China, the sales data published by Taobao and Tmall show that red wine still remains well ahead.
Earlier bestseller lists compiled by Vino Joy News for Sam’s Club and ALDI showed that wines priced above RMB 100 (about US$14) were relatively uncommon among the top sellers. On Taobao and Tmall, by contrast, wines priced above that threshold are common in both the red and white categories, and many of them could be considered fine wines. This suggests that wine consumers on Taobao and Tmall generally have greater purchasing power.
Below are the top five products on the Taobao/Tmall red wine and dry white wine bestseller lists. It should be noted that the platforms calculate sales by product listing, meaning that in some cases a single link may include more than one wine.
Scroll through the pages to see the best-selling white and red wines.
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