Mexico is promoting its national liquor tequila to China through an all-out campaign in the hope of making China the world's biggest tequila consumer in three to five years, Roberto Anaya Moreno, general director of Mexico's National Chamber of the Tequila Industry (CNIT) said Thursday, Dec. 10, in an interview with Xinhua.
Anaya said during a tequila pairing event organized in Beijing that the Mexican tequila has become popular among Chinese drinkers since its arrival in 2013, after the government allowed Mexican exporters to bring the liquor directly to the Chinese market.
According to Anaya, China will likely equal or even surpass the United States to be the no.1 tequila consumer by 2020, in which the CNIT expects to sell around 10 million liters of the drink in the country.
"We are two millennium civilizations who share a very similar tradition of enjoying a good spirit," said Anaya, comparing tequila with Chinese baijiu. "It is very easy for the Chinese people to accept the good quality of and the profound culture behind tequila."
The logo for the China campaign was also shown where a Chinese dragon totem is entwined to Quetzalcoatl, a feathered serpent of aboriginal Aztec-Mayan mythology. Beside them is a blue agave plant which gives the Mexican tequila its distinctive taste.
Enrique Escorza Zamudio, minister at the Mexican Embassy to Beijing, told Xinhua that tequila is a drink of infinite possibilities and its magic lies in bringing people close, making friends and being sincere, "as Mexico would like to offer to the Chinese nation."
"Tequila can be enjoyed among friends and family on casual occasions, and it can be served at the most luxurious business banquets," Escorza said.
According to CNIT statistics, exports of tequila to China grew 17 percent year-on-year during the first three months of 2015, with more than 260,000 liters shipped across the Pacific.
From June 2013 to June 2014, tequila exports to China went up 104 percent, the statistics showed.