How Did Chinese Liquor Brand Maotai Rank #1 in the F&B Category During 11.11?
During the COVID-19 pandemic the Chinese hard liquor brand Maotai has become one of the most expensive alcohol brands in China, surpassing many foreign brands. Its popularity has increased dramatically during the pandemic, one of the reasons is during the quarantine a lot of people has turned to alcohol for comfort. That is easy to understand. However, Maotai’s popularity goes beyond that, it has now become a new trendy commodity for young people as well. So much so that Maotai ranked #1 in the food category on Tmall during this year’s 11.11 Shopping Festival.
What is Maotai
To understand this new trend, we need to dig deeper into what exactly is Maotai. Maotai or Moutai is a brand of baijiu, a distilled Chinese liquor (spirit), made in the town of Maotai in China’s Guizhou province. It dates back to the Qing dynasty, and is considered to be China’s national liquor.
It is the only alcoholic beverage that China gives as an official gift at Chinese embassies in foreign countries and regions. On one occasion when the Chinese president Deng Xiaoping visited the US in 1979, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told him “I think if we drink enough Maotai we can solve anything.”
The Scarcity Factor
Due to its unique geographic location and climate that gives the alcohol it’s unique flavor, Maotai is very difficult to produce and can only be produced in the original distillery. In fact, the company actually tried several times to move the distillery from this remote location to a more accessible modern factory, and they quickly found out the flavor was vastly different. The company even tried to bring soil from the town to reproduce crops that Maotai is distilled from, still they were unsuccessful to replicate the unique flavor.
Not only is Maotai difficult to make, on top of that, every bottle must be aged for five years before it can be sold. These two factors alone create great scarcity.
Buying as an Investment, Not to Drink
When it comes to hard liquor, age is especially important, some of them has been aged for 30 years and the price is equivalent to a luxury sedan in China. Prices for bottles of Maotai range from 300 USD to 43,000 USD. and to be honest there is no price cap on this liquid gold, the age determines the price. So, if you buy a bottle today, after 70 years it might be well over 40k. That’s also why more and more people instead of buying gold now they are buying Maotai as the new investment.
Growing Interest in Traditional Chinese Culture Creates More Demand
In recent years China has dramatically changed its culture among younger generations from loving everything western to embracing traditional Chinese culture. We see it from the fashion industry to art galleries, now we are seeing it in the beverage industry. More and more young people are turning away from western liquor brands to traditional Chinese baijiu (hard liquor) brands as something cool and trendy to have.
Conclusion
One thing for sure is that Maotai definitely is in a league on its own, so far there is not another alcohol brand has yet to achieve this kind status, and I don’t see this trend going anywhere soon, it has such history and character that this brand will remain the leader among Chinese alcoholic beverage brands for the foreseeable future.
And I don’t think the demand will be limited to China. Maotai has gained several international awards for its unique flavor and manufacturing process, it is only matter of time before we will find Maotai in high end bars around the world.
