Franco-Japanese wine drive

This forwarded to me from a friend:

"The Tokyo office of Sopexa, France’s Societe pour l’expansion des ventes des produits agricoles et alimentaires (Society for the Expansion of Sales of Agricultural and Food Products) is presently running a contest where restaurants get a chance in a draw with each eight Bordeaux wine bottle corks they collect.Ten winners receive 100,000 yen ($860) worth of Bordeaux wine."

So, what is $860 in Bordeaux these days?
Like 1 bottle of Petrus, and maybe enough left over to buy a cheap corkscrew...

Wow...the restaurants are getting pretty hosed on that one.

Can't really say that the french are taking much of a risk at all with that...not even a full case of Petrus...

French pour resources into Japan wine market [link]

Meanwhile, the Aussies report more penetration of the Japanese market as well..

"But, although wine's share of the total Japanese alcoholic beverages market remains stuck around 2.7 per cent - where it has been for five years - imports of Australian still (bottled, non-sparkling) wines grew last year almost 24 per cent to 8.7 million litres.

At the same time French sales, which have long dominated the Japanese market, declined 9.4 per cent, while total import volumes of still wines contracted 5 per cent."
[the Australian online - link]