Driving to Bordeaux, the three of them found a hotel to stay, and in the next few days, Xiao Yifei carefully inspected the local winery.

In Bordeaux, the price of a 1-hectare vineyard at an average château is between 20 and 1 million euros, the price of a 1-hectare vineyard at a prestigious vineyard is between 2 million and 5 million euros, and the price of a 40-hectare vineyard at a Grand Cru can reach hundreds of millions of euros. (1 hectare equals 2.5 acres, which also equals 15 acres.) 1 acre equals 6 acres. ）

In addition, the operating costs of the vineyard here in Bordeaux are not low, and to ensure that the winery produces 100,000 bottles a year, it needs to invest about 3 million euros, and 200,000 bottles need to invest 5 million euros.

Obviously, his 2 million euros are not enough. Of course, this is not to say that 2 million yuan cannot buy a winery, last year, the daughter of the chairman of Qingdao Hailong Group spent 30 million yuan to buy the 70-hectare Château La Tourlagan in the Bordeaux region. 30 million yuan, which is 3 million euros less.

But the French describe this winery as "an entry-level beautiful winery with towers and turrets." These wineries are cheap on land, and the wines they produce are difficult to find a foothold in traditional markets and have to be sold in China. ”

Xiao Yifei has been self-aware from the beginning, he knows that he doesn't have to think about top wineries like Lafite and Latour, France will never sell these wineries. In 1963, Château Latour sold its shares to the British, and there was an uproar in the country, believing them to be traitors. In the end, it was the boss of Printemp who bought the shares back.

It is conceivable that if Xiao Yifei wants to move these wineries, he will definitely be rejected for the transaction. But if Xiao Yifei had to buy these cheap wineries, then the sales of the wine would be problematic. He does not have as many connections as the chairman's daughter in China, and he can ship red wine back to China to sell it at a high price. Therefore, the best thing is to buy a well-known classified winery, so that it can be shipped with the help of the winery's original sales channels.

However, the reality is that classified cru is extremely difficult to buy, especially the 61 classified cru on the left bank of Bordeaux that have been graded since 1855, and these châteaux are rarely sold for sale, and some of them are very expensive, often hundreds of millions of euros. As for the Classified Cru on the right bank, there is one for sale now, called Chateau Bellefont-Belcier. However, the total area of the winery is only 20 hectares, and the vineyard is 13 hectares, so it dares to ask for 40 million euros, which is too expensive. You know, this winery is not yet a 1885 classified champ on the left bank, but on the right bank. And this winery is not a classified winery on the right bank that began to be classified in 1955, but a classified winery that was successfully upgraded in 2006.

With the first half of the year there are two more small wineries Chateau

Vieux-Brondeau and Chateau Richelieu were bought by the Chinese, and these are simply small Bordeaux appellation-level small wineries, which made the French exclaim that "the greedy dragon is coming". Once Xiao Yifei wins a classified winery, or even an old listed wine on the left bank, shouldn't these people say "the Chinese bought France"?

Speaking of "buying France", Xiao Yifei saw with his own eyes in Paris a few days ago that some people were protesting, saying that the Chinese wanted to "buy Paris".

The story is that the economic crisis caused the price of detached houses in Paris, including villas, to plummet by as much as 10%, but with the arrival of the Chinese, everything is different.

Today, more than 100,000 Wenzhou businessmen have flocked to the 3rd arrondissement of the traditional Chinese district, the 13th arrondissement and the 19th arrondissement of the Chinese district in Paris, France. Among them, in the 3rd arrondissement, a large amount of money was raised through the collective "meeting" of underground banks, and then the entire street of the French capital was bought. This is to complete what the predecessors of Chinese immigrants did not accomplish, and use money to smash out the rhythm of a big Chinatown.

This kind of business practice has caused an outcry from the old residents of the area. Many Europeans and African immigrants who want to buy a house in Paris have to go to the suburbs to buy low-cost housing. Some old men and old ladies in old Paris who want to buy French bread have to bypass several Chinatowns to buy the bread products that Europeans like to eat. Otherwise, you can only eat steamed buns, eat fried dough sticks, and drink soy milk in the Chinese community.

Therefore, some time ago, the chief executive of the 3rd arrondissement of Paris marched on the streets with all the civil servants to the presidential palace to petition for the people. Efforts were made to prevent the Wenzhou real estate speculation group and the Xinhua businessmen from immigrating the streets and alleys of the French capital Paris like a "plague".

From here, it can be seen that the French still have a great rejection of the Chinese, originally their economy is not good, the Chinese came to send them money, to save their economy, they are still so unappreciative. The French government is still very wise, not only does not stop it, but also keeps introducing a series of preferential policies to encourage Chinese businessmen to invest in France.

After a few days of investigation, Xiao Yifei completely gave up the idea of buying wine wineries in Bordeaux or France, and planned to listen to Shirley's advice and see the situation of California wineries. Of course, it was not the price factor that eventually prompted him to abandon buying a château in Bordeaux or France, but a law.

In Bordeaux, vineyards cannot be irrigated by law, and unless there is a severe drought across the country, the water required by the vineyards depends on the amount of precipitation that determines the quality of the vintage.

Xiao Yifei didn't notice this at all at the beginning of his investigation. It wasn't until he suddenly discovered that all the vineyards didn't have drip irrigation equipment, and asked a vineyard owner his own question, and he got the bad news.

Why is it bad news? Because if you can't irrigate the space water, it means that the grapes can't be optimized, and even the grapes will be degraded after the space is strengthened, so he won't have any advantage, so what difference does it make if there is no space.

After giving up on Bordeaux and even French wineries, Xiao Yifei remembered that Shirley had mentioned Napa Winery in California, but he couldn't go to California to investigate it immediately, so he could only find information about California vineyards on the Internet, and he wanted to find out as soon as possible whether there was a future for planting grapes in California.

As he found more information, he felt more and more that it might be wise to go to California, where at least most of the vineyards had drip irrigation equipment where he could irrigate the grapes with water from the space.

Xiao Yifei stood in front of the window, looking at the lights outside, and after a cigarette, he completely made up his mind that he would go back to Paris tomorrow to see if he could get a visa to go to the United States, and go directly to Napa, California to inspect and find a good winery.

Lying on the bed, Xiao Yifei smiled because he saw the magazine provided by the hotel on the bedside table, "Wine Lovers". As it is Bordeaux, bedtime magazines are all about wine.

Flipping through the magazine, Xiao Yifei actually saw the name of an "acquaintance", that is, the Monterena winery (chateau_montelena) that he had just seen on the tablet two days ago, Xiao Yifei carefully checked the contents, and it turned out that Bordeaux's Château Esture (chateau_cosd'_estournel) gave up the acquisition of Monterena winery and its vineyards because of financial problems, and the transaction amount was said to be as high as 110 million US dollars.

Xiao Yifei hurriedly read this article carefully. It turned out that this was mainly a review article, talking about the impact of the economic crisis on the wine industry, which roughly means that everyone is now interested in lowering the price of wine en primeur, affecting the profitability of wineries, and spilling tens of thousands of words. The abandonment of the acquisition is mentioned as an example.

Xiao Yifei was just amazed at the fact that this Monterena was really valuable, but after thinking about it, did he want to intervene? It's just that Monterena was the winner of the white wine category at the time of the Paris jury, and now the sales of white wine are obviously not as good as red wine, is it worth it?

Xiao Yifei looked up this Monterena winery on the Internet.

Located in Napa, one of California's best wine regions, Château Monterena has gained a reputation as "judged by Paris". However, the most expensive wine sold by the winery is not the Chardonnay white wine for which it was honored, but the Cabernet Sauvignon red wine. It is generally accepted that the quality of its red wines is stable, which means that when it comes to a bad year in Napa, other people's wines will deteriorate, but his wine is still the same as before. Of course, there are advantages to this, for example, the most famous master sommelier Parker always gives him a score of around 95, and it will never fall below 90. But there is also a downside, that is, in good years, the quality of his wines is still the same. As a result, his most expensive wine is only $150 a bottle, and it is not even the most expensive wine in the Napa Valley compared to the five famous Bordeaux wineries.

At this time, two points of view were fighting in my mind, saying that I would buy it and that it was too expensive. Xiao Yifei originally planned to buy a winery of tens of millions to test the water, but now he was a little shaken when he saw the Monterena winery. So he simply took out a pen and paper, and continued to check the information while carefully assessing.

For the purchase of a wine winery, it is important to consider the raw materials, winemaking technology, sales channels, and the most important thing is the profit or return on investment cycle.

First of all, the raw materials, Monterena has its own 200 acres of vineyards, and there are 55 acres of leases, and there are no problems with the raw materials.

Needless to say, the winery has a skilled hand, Xiao Yifei will definitely take over and continue, and there is a saying that the quality of wine depends on grapes for 7 points and technology for 3 points. As long as he watered the grapes, the quality of the wine would only go up, not down.

Sales channels, this has always been the weakest point for our Chinese, especially for Xiao Yifei, who has no domestic channels. Because he has always wanted to buy a winery that is famous enough, because as a famous winery, there must be mature sales channels, so that he will not be unable to sell or can only sell cheaply after he takes over. According to online data, the winery produces 42,000 cases per year, 90% of which are sold in the US market, and only 10% go overseas. Xiao Yifei also found that the winery has already entered the Chinese market with a very small amount of wine, so there is no need to worry about sales channels.

As for the payback cycle, Xiao Yifei found wine prices on Monterena's official website and found that he only had 5 varieties that sold for between $25 and $150.

Xiao Yifei looked up the cost of wine online and found that the CEO of Broncowine Company, the fourth-largest wine manufacturer in the United States, also known as Broncowine, said that "a bottle of wine should not sell for more than $10." (Maybe it's because of the fact that their company focuses on low-priced wines, of course.) ）

However, Xiao Yifei calculated according to the various items such as wine bottles, wine labels, corks, and oak barrels provided on the Internet, and the cost of Monterena winery wine is about $15 per bottle, even if you add labor costs, marketing costs, taxes and other costs, you can have a net profit of 20 million US dollars a year. This estimate is also consistent with the rule that the purchase price is a profit of 5 to 10 years.

After some weighing, Xiao Yifei was already excited about Monterena Winery in his heart. As for the price of more than 100 million, it's a big deal to sell all the oil paintings.

Now he can't go on a field trip, which doesn't prevent Xiao Yifei from seeing the appearance of the winery, and he can find the winery with Google Earth software. Napa Valley, as the name suggests, is a valley, and the winery is actually in the deepest part of Napa Valley, which is too far away.

Putting the map to the maximum, Xiao Yifei's eyes widened violently, what did he see? Nine-curved covered bridge. Xiao Yifei clicked on the photo, it is really a nine-curved covered bridge with Chinese characteristics, and there is a pavilion on the island in the lake, which is absolutely Chinese characteristics.

It turned out that in the last century, due to Prohibition and rhizobia, the winery was in decline. In the fifties, a Chinese immigrant couple from China bought the winery as their "paradise" retirement place, and in 1963 excavated and built this "Jade Lake" to express and sustenance of the Chinese complex, and the husband named the garden after her nickname "Jade" in order to express his love for his wife.

This acquisition not only adds a Chinese flavor to the winery, but also makes the winery "the most beautiful winery in Napa".

Well, Xiao Yifei must admit that seeing this small lake with Chinese characteristics, Xiao Yifei has set an acquisition target in his heart.