Cognac and the comportment of the quality Chinese consumer

Abstract

The French cognac producer Hennessy recently staged a pop-up promotional event called Hennessy Declassified at the Galaxy Resort in Macau. The event coincided with the annual Golden Week holiday that in October 2019 commemorated the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, and aimed to educate Chinese tourists in Macau about the formative role of geography in the process of creating fine cognac. In this article, I provide a first-hand account of the immersive event and its efforts to cultivate consumer taste among a select group of post-Mao Chinese tourists. I demonstrate the ways in which China’s central government and the producers of Hennessy cognac both share a concern with the generative function of terroir and the relationship among topography and taste, and cooperate in a pedagogical program to produce discerning Chinese consumer-citizens.