ASC’s Don St. Pierre: China’s Wine Market Is Being Rediscovered

In June 2025, Don St. Pierre Jr. repurchased ASC Fine Wines, the company he had built from the ground up. By then, the business, one of China’s first major importers of wine, looked somewhat different from the one he remembered.

A decade ago, ASC was practically synonymous with the imported wine trade in China. But after riding the market’s peaks, navigating its corrections and enduring its troughs, the company had grown larger and slower.

“The company had become more bureaucratic, and decision-making had slowed,” St. Pierre, who resumed the role of chief executive, said in an interview with Vino Joy News in Chengdu.

In the ten months since his return, he has set about remaking the business. Beyond restoring its agility, a central task has been to reshape its business model to fit a transformed market.

Consumers today, St. Pierre argues, no longer drink to fulfil social obligations. They drink for themselves. Every adjustment ASC has made, he said, revolves around this shift in consumer mindset and the occasions for which people drink.

Yet he acknowledges that for a long stretch, the size of this new market has fallen well short of the era when government and corporate entertaining fuelled a culture of “crazy drinking”. That gap, he suggested, will likely force many players out of the wine trade, players who, in his view, perhaps never belonged there in the first place.

ASC, it is clear, has no intention of being among them.

ASC’s four strategic pillars

What, then, has St. Pierre done in the ten months since the June 2025 repurchase? He summarises the changes in four broad directions.

First, he has sought to pivot ASC from selling “luxury goods” to selling “experiences”.

“Today’s consumers are more willing to learn, they pay more attention to value, and they are increasingly drinking wine for their own daily enjoyment,” he said. “So as an importer and distributor, the way we sell wine has to change.”

The second pillar is efficiency. St. Pierre said that when he and his father previously owned ASC, they had cultivated a distinctly entrepreneurial culture: decisions were made quickly, and the company moved fast in response to market shifts.

“The company we bought back from Suntory had become more bureaucratic, with a slower decision-making process,” he said. “So we needed to make the company entrepreneurial again, able to make decisions faster.”

“Suntory is a very fine company, but they sell many different product categories. When we bought ASC back, we were focused on just one thing – wine. So we wanted to ensure that our people and our corporate culture are centred entirely on wine.”

The third area of change involves logistics and warehousing. ASC has partnered with GFS, one of China’s largest cold-chain logistics operators, handing over all warehousing, logistics and order fulfilment to the company.

To become a sustainably growing business, St. Pierre argued, ASC must have best-in-class warehousing and logistics, something difficult to achieve to the highest standard on one’s own.

The fourth pillar is digital. St. Pierre believes that for an importer and distributor, understanding the consumer is essential.

“To understand consumers, we have to be excellent at digital channels,” he said. “We need to be good at telling consumers the stories behind the wines. We also need to support our distributor clients, giving them the tools to sell more effectively to their own customers. At the same time, we need the capability to sell directly to consumers—to meet the needs of those who want to buy the wines we import.”

The possibility of a business consumption recovery

St. Pierre believes mass-market consumption will dominate China’s wine market in the future, but he remains cautiously optimistic about the return of business-related drinking.

“In the past, the way wine was sold in China actually benefited from two unique cultural factors: one related to the government, the other to private enterprise,” he said.

Government-related consumption, in his view, has undergone structural change and is unlikely to return to its former state.

But as China’s economy gradually recovers and market confidence rebuilds, business investment and corporate activity are picking up. Consumption linked to socialising, entertainment and relationship-building is likely to re-emerge.

“In the future, these activities will no longer be centred mainly on government, but will come more from private enterprise,” he said. “And that will become an important part of wine consumption going forward.”

Yet St. Pierre acknowledges that with China’s economy no longer as robust as it once was, and with the culture of heavy drinking at the banquet table gradually fading, business consumption will struggle to return to its previous scale.

For a long period, he said, mass consumption will struggle to fully fill the gap.

“During this transitional phase, many companies will face survival pressures,” he said. “But from an industry perspective, that is not necessarily a bad thing. In the past, quite a few companies entered the wine business that were not necessarily suited to it.”

Distributors must change their approach

For distributors that have relied on the tuán gòu or group-buying channel, St. Pierre said, the sales model must change.

“Today’s consumers are more concerned with authenticity than in the past,” he said. “They want to buy products with real quality and real stories.”

“The channels that can provide that experience well, the ones where staff can explain the wine to consumers, are actually doing quite well.”

Importers and distributors, he argued, must therefore help their channel partners become better at providing information and service to consumers.

He also offered advice for the on-trade.

As market pricing becomes increasingly transparent and consumers more price-sensitive, he said, restaurants need to be more reasonable with their mark-ups.

“Some restaurants may choose to offer only wines that are not available online – wines not sold in retail channels – so they can set higher prices,” he said. “That approach can work, but it requires restaurant staff to become better at explaining those wines to customers, who are often unfamiliar with them.”

He also observed early signs of recovery in the on-trade. Since the start of 2025, more foreigners have been returning to Shanghai. Initially, most were tourists whose spending in restaurants was modest. Now business travellers are beginning to return, and wine consumption stands to benefit as corporate travel picks up.

Betting heavily on Australian wine

Last year, ASC established a new partnership with Jacob’s Creek. St. Pierre said the move filled an important gap in ASC’s portfolio.

“ASC has always had some good Australian brands,” he said. “But in the retail and distributor channels, we still needed a more mass-market, influential brand.”

In his view, Jacob’s Creek was once one of the most successful wine brands in China.

“Pernod Ricard invested heavily in the brand in the past and built strong brand recognition. But over the past four or five years, the brand’s momentum stalled,” he said. “We believe that under ASC’s operations and a new brand structure, we can revitalise it in the Chinese market.”

Looking at ASC’s Australian portfolio today, he added, it is more comprehensive, richer in variety, and capable of serving multiple channels, underscoring the importance of Australian wine within ASC’s broader offering.

LoNo market

With the low-alcohol and no-alcohol wine market gaining momentum, St. Pierre said ASC is watching closely and does have plans to enter the space.

He remains cautious, however, about no-alcohol wine. “Frankly, I’m not particularly confident about no-alcohol wine,” he said. “I think the opportunity for low-alcohol wine is much bigger.”

From a regulatory standpoint, China has clearer rules for low-alcohol products, while the regulatory framework for no-alcohol products remains more ambiguous.

“A professional company like ASC has to comply strictly with regulations,” St. Pierre said. “But when the regulations themselves are unclear, that creates a degree of uncertainty.”

Suppliers’ confidence in the Chinese market is rebounding

During the interview, St. Pierre also touched on ASC’s plans for 2026. He said the company would continue to pursue the four strategic pillars it laid out in 2025, while also announcing new brand partnerships in the near future.

“We will announce some new brand partnerships soon,” he said. “By 2026, ASC’s portfolio will be stronger than it was in 2025.”

Over the past twelve months, he noted, the global market environment has shifted considerably. Based on his conversations with wine producers around the world, he sees international wineries showing significantly more interest in the Chinese market than they did a year ago.

“More and more producers are starting to view China as a more stable, one might even say more reliablepartner,” he said.

In his view, the Chinese economy went through a difficult period over the past three to four years, but as the outside world deepens its understanding of the country’s economic restructuring, international confidence in China’s direction is rebuilding.

“Producers around the world are gaining a better understanding of the changes taking place in China’s economy, and they are gradually coming to believe that China’s development path is the right one,” he said. “As a result, their attention to the Chinese market is rising again.”

At the same time, he said, this means importers like ASC must take on an even greater bridging role.

“As their key partner in China, we have to do a better job,” St. Pierre said. “We need to explain more clearly to them where the opportunities are in the Chinese market, and we also need to tell them where we need their support.”