Ep 12: Why Don St Pierre Is Excited About Both the Wine Business and the Chinese Wine Market
While many entrepreneurs are backing away slowly from both the wine industry and China, Don St Pierre Jr is rushing back in — because he sees plenty of opportunity.
In 1996, two Don St Pierres — senior and junior — changed the world of wine forever when they founded ASC Fine Wines in Shanghai.
Don St. Pierre Snr saw an opportunity in wine: as he later wrote about China’s 1.2 billion population, “all of these folks had to drink and eat something.”
Before long, the St Pierres were distributing Beringer and Bollinger, among other fine wines. They pretty much singlehandedly established China’s fine wine market.
Don St Pierre Jr. retired from the business in 2015, and shortly after became CEO and co-owner of California’s Vinfolio. Don St Pierre Sr died in 2023.
Recently Don St Pierre Jr founded AdaptEdge, an investment and advisory company. One of its first investments was in Vino Joy News, the media company founded by Natalie Wang.
And on St Pierre emains bullish on China, even though wine consumption there peaked in 2017. In this podcast, he explains why he believes so strongly in the country, and why he remains so optimistic about the wine industry in general.
In this wide-ranging conversation he reveals:
Why he loves family-run companies and how he evaluates themHow digital innovation can resolve some of the distribution bottleneck problemsWhy producers and businesses elsewhere should be taking inspiration from ChinaHow to research the Chinese marketInsights from the Harvard Innovation LabAs always, the takeaways will be in the newsletter, which you can sign up for at drinksinsider.com
Drinks Insider
The podcast that's interested in everything drinks. If you can drink it, sell it, and make money from it, we'll talk about it, though we're (mostly) fascinated by beverage alcohol. It's all about the intersection of drinks and commerce.
- No. of episodes: 42
- Latest episode: 2025-09-03
- Business Entrepreneurship
Where can you listen?
