On June 25th, the wholesale reference price of bulk Feitian Maotai fell below 1800 yuan per bottle, reaching 1780 yuan per bottle, marking a new low since 2018. This price drop occurred earlier than expected, before the Mid-Autumn Festival.
According to data from the alcohol market monitoring platform “Today’s Liquor” on June 25th, the bulk Feitian Maotai was priced at 1780 yuan per bottle. The online platform Pinduoduo showed a price of 1760 yuan per bottle for the Feitian Maotai. A liquor merchant revealed to “Blue Whale News” on June 25th that “if the channels are suitable, a price around 1800 yuan per bottle can still be found.”
As reported by Red Star News from Chengdu Business Daily on June 25th, since 2025, with the continuous weakening demand in the high-end liquor market, the retail price of Feitian Maotai has been on a downward trend. On January 1st, the bulk and original box wholesale prices were 2220 yuan per bottle and 2315 yuan per bottle respectively. As of now, the price per bottle has dropped by 440 yuan, a decrease of 19.82%; the original box price has fallen by 485 yuan, a decrease of 20.95%.
According to reports, a liquor recycler in Chengdu stated that on the 25th, the price for recycling a single bottle of Feitian Maotai was 1650 yuan, dropping almost a hundred yuan from the previous day. If in larger quantities, the price could go down to 1600 yuan per bottle, with the original box recycling price at 10,200 yuan (equivalent to 1700 yuan per bottle), and the prices of different years of Feitian Maotai not varying much. He mentioned, “Maotai is dropping drastically now, and many (recyclers) are not accepting it anymore.”
Another liquor recycler in Wuhan also mentioned that on the 25th, the price for recycling Feitian Maotai dropped by a hundred yuan, “It just dropped at noon today.” The recycling prices for the original box and bulk were 1650 yuan per bottle and 1600 yuan per bottle respectively. He added, “I used to stock up on a lot before and ended up losing money. Now I don’t keep any stock; I sell as much as I can get.”
The industry generally considers 1800 yuan as the comprehensive cost line for Feitian Maotai distributors. The breach of this price mark has caused a stir in the market, as reported by Blue Whale News, with Feitian Maotai dropping below 1800 yuan in June much earlier than the general expectation around the Mid-Autumn Festival.
A liquor merchant in the East China region believes, “There may be a certain level of panic in the supply chain.”
Some liquor merchants predict that Maotai will “hold on” to the official guidance price bottom line of 1499 yuan per bottle before the Mid-Autumn Festival. Once this price line is breached, it will pose a challenge to the price support of the entire Maotai product system.
Cai Xuefei, a China liquor industry expert and general manager of Zhi Qu Consulting, suggested that once Feitian Maotai falls below 1800 yuan, it might trigger an emergency intervention from Maotai.
As for Maotai’s thousand-yuan series of liquor, the performance is even worse. According to a report from “New Yellow River” under Jinan Daily Newspaper Group on June 24th, a liquor distributor in Jinan revealed that other Maotai series products have even worse sales, facing severe pressure from excess inventory. The popular Maotai 1935 series, which once sold at over 1800 yuan per bottle, has now dropped to just over 600 yuan, falling below the factory price (798 yuan per bottle), resulting in nearly 200 yuan in losses for the distributors for each bottle sold.
A distributor analyzed by “New Yellow River” cited the imbalance in supply and demand as the key issue. In 2025, Maotai’s liquor production capacity reached 57,200 tons, coupled with slow inventory digestion, creating significant market supply pressure. Meanwhile, the demand side is affected by economic downturn, with core scenarios like business banquets and gift-giving shrinking, and young consumers shifting towards low-alcohol beverages, leading to weakened demand for high-end liquor.
Maotai’s situation reflects the broader Chinese liquor industry. According to the “2025 China Liquor Market Mid-term Research Report” released by the China Alcoholic Drinks Association on June 18th, the liquor industry is entering a phase of deep adjustment. The association believes that the era of blind expansion in the liquor industry has ended, and destocking remains the mainstream approach.