China Spirits Tracker: Dragon Boat Festival around the corner: Weak outlook despite a low base; Muted wholesale price trend

Research evidence excerpt

China Spirits Tracker: Dragon Boat Festival around the corner: Weak outlook despite a low base; Muted wholesale price trend

Equity Research

16 June 2026 | 11:40AM HKT

China Spirits Tracker: Dragon Boat Festival around the corner: Weak

outlook despite a low base; Muted wholesale price trend

Indicative Dragon Boat Festival demand - weaker distributor expectations: We Leaf Liu

+852-3966-4169 | leaf.liu@gs.com

see a relatively weak outlook for this year’s Dragon Boat Festival sell-through (based Goldman Sachs (Asia) L.L.C.

on some early distributor feedback which indicate expectations of 10~20% retail Christina Liu

growth for Moutai/Wuliangye, moving down vs. prior expectations for 20~30%), +852-2978-6983Goldman Sachs (Asia)| christina.liu@gs.comL.L.C.

despite the low base in 2025 due to policy impacts (which saw a DD% decline for Valerie Zhou

premium spirits, and high DD% decline for upper mid end). In terms of distributor +852-2978-0820Goldman Sachs (Asia)| valerie.zhou@gs.comL.L.C.

stocking pace/demand for the Dragon Boat Festival, our channel checks show

relatively muted pre-season channel actions by brands, indicating still cautious

distributor sentiment/outlook for retail demand in the upcoming festival. We note

that the Dragon Boat Festival typically has a small seasonal impact on China’s spirits

consumption, while Mid Autumn Festival/National Holiday tends to be more

important for observing an inflection point.

Feitian wholesale price has been largely stable (at c.Rmb1,635~Rmb1,670 per

bottle) with low channel inventory (<1 month in East China per channel checks).

Wholesale prices for non-standard SKUs remained soft (esp. Zodiac and 1-L Moutai)

probably due to increasing volume on i-Moutai (Moutai’s AGM highlighted c.7.13mn

transactions in 5M26 vs.