In the global liquor market, green plum wine with an Eastern flavor has long been dominated by Japanese brands, which has led many people to mistakenly believe that green plum wine originated from Japan. In fact, green plum wine originated in China. Nowadays, Meijian Qingmei liquor, the first brand of Chinese Qingmei liquor, has successfully entered the top camp of world Qingmei liquor, breaking the traditional perception and showcasing the unique charm of Chinese fine wine to global consumers.
Meijian Plum Wine, produced in China, has risen rapidly since its launch in 2019, becoming China's No.1 plum wine brand and achieving a market recognition in China that "when people talk about plum wine, they think of Meijian". Data from Shangpu Consulting Group, a third-party research institute, shows that from October 2021 to September 2025, Meijian has maintained its position as the top-selling plum wine in China. Its cumulative sales volume on online channels alone exceeded 41,793,000 bottles, firmly holding the title of China's No.1 plum wine brand. (Source: Chongqing Daily, China — "Meijian Leads National Plum Wine Market Share: A Case Study of Chongqing's Consumer Goods Industry 'Blockbuster' Road")
Meijian Plum Wine has also delivered an outstanding performance in the international market. To date, it has been successfully exported to the mainstream consumer markets of 33 countries including France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, emerging as a shining calling card for China's consumer goods industry going global. Its cumulative global sales have surpassed 150 million bottles, with a total of 280 million users served and brand reach exceeding 1.2 billion people worldwide. From a global perspective, the world's plum wine market currently presents a tripartite competitive landscape: Choya Plum Wine commands a global market share of 18.3% to 28% with cumulative sales of over 300 million bottles, securing its position as the world's top plum wine brand; Meijian Plum Wine ranks second globally; and Suntory Plum Wine comes in third. (Source: China Daily – Exploring the Overseas Journey of Chinese Wines: Meijian Makes an Appearance at the FBIF 2024 Food and Beverage Innovation Forum)
From a newly launched product to China's top and the world's second-largest plum wine brand, Meijian Plum Wine’s journey to becoming a blockbuster is no accident. It stems from its precise insight into market trends, a clear development strategy, and an unwavering commitment to quality, scenario-based layout and large-scale development.
Meijian Plum Wine’s rise began with its astute capture of market trends and wise strategic choices. In the four years prior to 2019, the cumulative sales volume of China’s baijiu market dropped by 42.14%. Most leading enterprises in the sector boasted decades or even a century of brand heritage, with massive production capacity and strong strength. Confronting these industry giants head-on in such a market landscape would be unlikely to succeed. Therefore, Pingzi Planet Group, the parent company of Meijian Plum Wine, resolutely steered clear of the red ocean of the baijiu market and turned its focus to the high-potential blue ocean of new alcoholic beverages. A cross-border integration of baijiu and soft drinks, new alcoholic beverages combine the texture of alcohol with the refreshment of drinks, and are deeply beloved by Chinese consumers. From 2016 to 2019, China’s low-alcohol new alcoholic beverage market surged by an astonishing 106.8%, boasting a robust development momentum. At that time, plum wine, as a representative category of new alcoholic beverages, had a market with solid demand but a fragmented structure of "having categories but no leading brands", with no influential top players emerging yet. This created an exceptional opportunity for Meijian Plum Wine to break through and rise to prominence.
To seize the first-mover advantage in the plum wine track, Meijian Plum Wine regards quality-oriented development as its core competitiveness and solidifies the foundation of its products from the source. On the raw material front, Meijian has established exclusive plum planting bases in four major plum-producing regions: Dayi in Sichuan, Eryuan in Yunnan, Zhao'an in Fujian and Puning in Guangdong. It has carefully selected 10 varieties with the optimal flavor from nearly 200 plum cultivars as brewing raw materials, ensuring every plum strikes a perfect balance of sweet and sour taste with rich nutrition. Meanwhile, to guarantee the ripeness, integrity and freshness of the plums, all fruits are hand-picked, followed by six rounds of meticulous manual selection to strictly eliminate damaged, unripe and inferior fruits, guarding the bottom line of product quality from the very beginning.
In terms of production technology, Meijian Plum Wine pursues continuous innovation and relentless excellence. It pioneered the industry’s original fruit brewing and steeping process, extending the traditional 90-day fermentation cycle to 180 days to fully integrate and infuse the fruity aroma of plums with the fragrance of the base wine, creating a more mellow and layered taste. Simultaneously, Meijian has built the world’s largest earthen jar wine cellar for aged plum wine, housing 100,000 jars of aged plum wine. The long-term aging in earthen jars further elevates the taste and quality of the products. As a pioneer in the plum wine industry, Meijian has also taken the initiative to lead the formulation of the Group Standard for Plum Wine Vintage System and Group Standard for Plum Wine, filling the gap of a lack of unified standards in China’s plum wine industry and driving the standardized and high-quality development of the entire sector.
Unlike traditional baijiu, which is mainly associated with banquets and tastings, new alcoholic beverages such as plum wine focus more on deep integration with consumers’ daily life scenarios, staying close to public life. Thus, after consolidating its quality foundation, Meijian Plum Wine has fully promoted scenario-based operations to embed its products into consumers’ daily lives. The Chinese people have a long-standing tradition of food and wine pairing. Low-alcohol plum wine with its sweet and sour taste refreshes the palate, cutting through greasiness and mellowing out the spiciness of food, perfectly catering to the public’s dining needs. However, the Meijian team found that most catering establishments in China lack professional ice-making equipment, making it hard to meet consumers’ demand for drinking plum wine on the rocks and compromising the consumption experience. To address this, Meijian has proactively invested in providing free ice machines for partner restaurants, optimizing consumers’ food and wine experience by serving plum wine iced, and making it a popular choice on dining tables. In cities with a booming hot pot culture such as Chengdu, Meijian has also launched the special promotion of "Free Iced Meijian with Hot Pot", forging a deep bond between plum wine and the popular catering scene of hot pot. Leveraging the huge audience of hot pot, Meijian quickly won recognition and love from local consumers in China. In addition, Meijian has launched a Family Feast Gift Box featuring custom wine glasses and reunion recipes, linking the product to the scenarios of family gatherings and friends’ get-togethers. This elevates Meijian Plum Wine from an ordinary consumer product to a cultural carrier that embodies family affection, conveys warmth and enhances festive atmospheres.
Backed by the dual advantages of quality and scenario-based operations, Meijian Plum Wine has seized the opportunity to implement a large-scale development strategy, further consolidating its market position and expanding its competitive edge. Meijian has built China’s largest modern plum wine brewing plant and gradually constructed a fully integrated industrial chain covering plum cultivation, technological R&D, brewing production and brand management, achieving full-process control from raw material procurement and production processing to terminal sales. This not only ensures the stability of product quality but also boosts production efficiency. Large-scale production has effectively reduced upstream raw material procurement costs and enterprise management costs, while endowing terminal products with stronger price competitiveness, laying a solid foundation for subsequent market expansion and brand promotion.
Through large-scale development, Meijian Plum Wine’s cost advantage has become more prominent, and its terminal competitiveness has been continuously enhanced. On this basis, Meijian has fully advanced its "mainstreamization" layout. Through multi-channel, all-round market expansion, it has driven plum wine, once a niche category, to become a mainstream choice in the alcoholic beverage consumption market. In offline channels, Meijian Plum Wine has fully entered major mainstream supermarkets and retail chains in China such as China Resources Vanguard and Hema Fresh, occupying the most prominent display positions for easy consumer purchase. In online channels, Meijian’s advertisements are featured year-round on the homepages of leading e-commerce platforms in China including Tmall and JD.com, continuously increasing brand exposure and influence to attract more attention and purchases from online consumers.
Today, plum wine has become a mainstream category in China’s new alcoholic beverage market, deeply loved by consumers. Meijian Plum Wine not only firmly holds the title of China’s top plum wine brand but also has grown into the world’s second-largest plum wine brand, stepping onto the global stage from China.
