Asia's improved promise as a high-growth market for wine combined with a softening US outlook prompted a decision to hold the world's largest wine and spirits show in Hong Kong this year.

"In the US, importers are very quiet. They are even expecting a recession," Robert Beynat, chief executive of Vinexpo, the world’s largest wine and spirits show, told the Financial Times.

Vinexpo, based in Bordeaux, decided to hold its biennial international show in May in Hong Kong rather than New York or Chicago because of fears of US economic slowdown, the impact of a weaker dollar and political uncertainty in advance of presidential elections, said Mr Beynat.

In contrast, Asia's wine market will claim the world's highest annual growth rates at 9 per cent during the next five years compared with the world average of 1 per cent.

"Expectations are enormous, on a par with the outlook for economic growth in the region," said Vinexpo in a statement on Thursday.

Yet the US is poised to eclipse France as the world’s largest wine market by 2011, with estimated consumption of 28m hectolitres, or 3.73bn bottles, that year, says a study published on Thursday in New Delhi by Vinexpo and the International Wine and Spirits Record, a British consultancy.

China is the world's fastest-growing market with wine consumption expected to increase nearly 70 per cent to 4.79m hectolitres between 2006 and 2011, boosted by heavy investment in domestic wine production.

Wine consumption Asia-wide is expected to double during the next five years. Although measured against a low base, expansion of the region's wine market is "still enormous", said Mr Beynat.

Asia's top wine markets are China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. India is in eighth position.