Where to get good bottle wine in Shenzhen

Go to the grocery store in the basement of Mix City in downtown LouHu. It's real wine. You will not find any cheap wines or fake imports there. However, you WILL pay expat prices.

Our curiosity what's expat mark up price compare to similar bottle of wine if I wait till weekend grab from HK?  Sorry, I have no idea if you can help me the roughly ratio.  Thanks

Sigh.

Yellow tail is a fine import and it is real. It is from Australia. You can get it at the "D" supermarket. Prices fluctuate. Expect to pay at least 60 RMB a bottle. Normal prices are 75 RMB a bottle. Of course, I drink by the case, so I am always looking for real wine at decent prices. You can always find 350 RMB bottles of wine, and I think that you are just throwing your money away at that.

Great Wall has a good dry red wine. But there are many fakes out there. Expect to pay from 65 to 75RMB a bottle at a large name supermarket such as ren ren le. It's the real deal and pretty good as well.




This is what a bottle or REAL "Great Wall" wine  looks like.  Note the top of the wine. When you remove the cork, you will notice that the cork is plastic synthetic. It is not real cork. Real cork is cheap and it is used in fake wines.

Great wall has many types of wines. They have bought up smaller vineyards, and often sell the cheaper wine under their logo. You have to be careful.



When you see a top like this in a Great Wall wine, run away! This top is found on ChengYu wine. Now, ChengYu is also a good wine. But do not buy any great wall wine with this type of top. It is probably fake.

Fake stuff is everywhere and most people won't be able to tell the difference, but I can. Avoid anything from "Spain". I don't know if it is real imports or what, but every single bottle that I ever drank that hails from "Spain" is fake...fake...fake.



You can tell a fake bottle by the following guidelines... If you are sharing a bottle with another, a real bottle will make you feel warm. Two bottles will make you feel good, but not drunk. You will feel drunk on the third bottle.  A fake bottle of wine will be quite different.

You will get drunk on the first bottle when you are sharing it. By the second bottle if your partner is sitting up with drool coming out of their mouth it is certainly fake. The next day both of you will have splitting headaches, and really bad fake wine will result in messed up stomach and body for at least a week.

Real wine will NEVER give you a headache the next day even if you drink four bottles yourself.



If you buy in quantity, you can get real wine down to 200 RMB/case. Which is around 33 RMB/ bottle. But you will need to drink a few bottles first before you can tell the difference. In china, price has no bearing on the quality of the wine. Only the store's reputation does.

Ten days ago I paid 71 RMB for a bottle of "Great Wall" that I felt funny about, but I figured that it must of been ok because of the name and the price. I was wrong. It took two days to get rid of the headache.

Fake wines are a REAL problem in China. If you drink like I do, you can really mess up yourself really bad by drinking that poison. Lord only knows what goes in it. I have read stories that they use rubbing alcohol, automobile antifreeze, oven cleaner, and horse tranquilizers to get the desired flavors. They take grape juice, and add the chemicals. and age it in a kind of heated tub in the back of a pig farm, and then bottle it in reused foreign wine bottles. YUCK!



Great wall has many types and shapes and sizes. But remember, only go to a good reliable grocery store, and buy the real stuff. Not the fake stuff. This is why most Chinese prefer either Beer or White Wine. You cannot fake either of them, but you can fake red wine.

Best of luck.

Super helpful, thanks

Oh wow I am completely shocked at this answer! I had no idea some of the wines were fake -- I thought since it's not a heavy liquor, I would be safe! I did have a headache for about 2 days last weekend and I wondered why... probably bad wine at Coco Park!! I did find a not-bad Carmenere at the Bravo! in Coco Park though. It was 108RMB. I had a drink a few times after work last night from it and it never gave me trouble. I think Chile has some kind of special wine export deal with Asia, as I discovered Carmenere while living in South Korea because it was the cheapest wine I could find and turned out to be really delicious. Became my house wine!

Thanks so much for all the detail in your answer. Do you know if we would have better luck in Hong Kong, or are you not allowed to bring it across the border?

When in China you can bring wine back. I would advise you go through a duty free store at the border. No duty, reasonably priced, and REAL. Remember that there are limits on the number you can bring back with you. You don't want to have a bottle or two thrown away.

It is tricky getting real wine. Sometimes its a real battle. My mainstay is the Australian wine "Yellow Tail". The typical price is 70 to 120 RMB/bottle. D has it on sale around 60 RMB a bottle. However, even that is not immune from "copy-cat" fakes.



A copy cat fake.

A "copy cat" fake is a fake wine dressed up to look like a real wine. As most Chinese wines are unknown wines with made up names, labels and points of origin. You can not tell from the bottle shape. You cannot tell from the bottle labels, or seals. You cannot tell from the boxes that the wines come from. The problem is that all of the international wines get their labels, bottles, corks, and boxes out of China. So it is easy for the Chinese to make doubles.

Anyways, I once got some fake "Sharaz" that was Yellow Tail from a good store. So even if you know what you are doing, you can get tricked. You have got to be careful.



Well done, and well known brands are often faked.

Always remember the cork. If the cork is made out of plastic or a synthetic, then it is probably good. If it is a made out of a real cork, then it is a fake. The reason for this is that anyone can by cork. It is cheap and easy to get. Synthetic cooks are expensive, and regulated. There is also a MOQ (minimum order quantity) with is often much larger than the volume of the fake wine batch.

If you want to get a good bottle that won't cause any of your internal organs to collapse, then stick to beer, JinJiu, or white wine. Beware, some of the fakes are REALLY good and taste quite good. You might not realize it, but there are complete families that trade the secrets of good fake tasting wines. They improve their mixture over time, and some of the best can sell some very good tasting products that can bring them a lot of money. ... Provided that only one or two bottles are drunk by non-drinkers.



When a real wine drinker comes across the bottle, then the "jig is up".

Some rules of thumb. All wine from bars, or from the Internet are fake.  All wines that come from Spain are fake. All wines that are in a store (even a good store) that are "on sale" and they only have one pallet of it (maybe fifty cases) are fake...fake...fake.

Good Luck.

Great info! I'll probably stick with your plan to look for duty-free wine at the border. I'm so new that I just got my long-term visa that will enable me to go to HK so I was going to try to go this weekend. I will definitely bring a backpack and keep an eye open for these stores.
Thanks!