Bordeaux - Chinese investors now rival the French in buying vineyards in Bordeaux: a sign both of the region's global prestige and China's seemingly unquenchable thirst for wine, according to local property agencies and industry associations.
More than 100 properties in France's southwest wine-producing area are today owned by Chinese tycoons looking to diversify fortunes built upon real estate, jewellery, industry or tourism holdings.
"The biggest buyers are Chinese and French, with each accounting for around a third of the market," said Karin Maxwell, from a leading luxury real estate agency in the region, Maxwell-Storrie-Baynes.