China it is one of the oldest wine-producing countries on
the planet. However, wine has not been an important aspect of Chinese culture
until very recently. Already within the first two decades of the new century,
China has become not only a major producer but also a major consumer of wine.
Within the next decade, China could prove itself one of the leading players in
the world of wine.
Although grape wine has been consumed in China for at
least 4,600 years, a stronger version containing up to 20 percent alcohol, called
Huangjiu, or “yellow-wine,” made from fermented rice and cereals, has always
been more popular. Additionally, the Chinese have always consumed a distilled
version called Baijiu, which has a 40-60 percent alcohol content. Alcohol in
China is typically consumed in the form of toasts, drunk in small shot glasses
and tossed to the back of the throat—the complete opposite of everything
described in Chapter One of my book.
Modern Vitis vinifera grapes were probably first
introduced by the Greeks, led by Alexander the Great in the third century BC,
and planted in the extreme west of China in what is today’s Xinjiang Autonomous
Region. Marco Polo referred to the local wines when he passed through this area
in the thirteenth century. This Uighur populated province (ironically the most
Islamic part of China) is still the major wine-producing region in the nation,
even though it clings to the edge of the Gobi Desert. One of the vineyards
covers twenty-five thousand acres at 262 feet below sea level!
Following Deng Xiaoping’s Economic Reforms in the early
1980s, agricultural land was de-collectivized, private entrepreneurs were
permitted to develop vineyards, and foreign investment was encouraged. At the
same time, a growing middle class was becoming exposed to the outside world,
traveling to Europe and bringing back knowledge about foreign
cultures—including wine.
The French brandy house, Remy Martin/Cointreau,
established a joint venture in 1980 which eventually became Dynasty Wines,
producing over one hundred types of wine products in China. Initially, Chinese
wines were limited to the export market, but with the growing wealth of the
domestic market in the twenty-firstt century and a fast evolving appreciation
for wine, 90 percent of Chinese wine is now consumed domestically. While the
disposable income of the growing middle class accounts for the consumption of
home-grown Chinese wine, it is only the extreme wealth of the Chinese
billionaire class that can account for an obsessive consumption of French,
especially Bordeaux, wines. The Chinese love of Bordeaux wine is delightfully
explored in the 2013 movie Red Obsession.
Although most Chinese wine comes from the Xinjiang
Autonomous Region on the border with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and
Kazakhstan, a new northern area, Ningxia Province, also bordering the Gobi
Desert, is rapidly becoming the center of China’s fine-wine industry. With
160,000 acres of vineyards planned by 2020, Ningxia will be three times the
size of Napa. The French luxury goods giant LVMH has recently invested $28
million in a state-of-the-art winery called Chandon. An international
competition named "Bordeaux Against Ningxia" was held in Beijing in
December 2011, when experts from China and France tasted five wines from each region.
Ningxia was the clear winner, with four out of five of the top wines. The best
wine in the whole competition was the 2009 Chairman's Reserve, a Cabernet
Sauvignon which even Robert Parker rated as “not bad.” It is unclear whether
the name referred to Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book.
Another rapidly expanding wine-growing area is Shandong
Province on the coast of the Yellow Sea, which, with 140 wineries, already
produces 40 percent of Chinese wine. The latest company to invest in Shandong
is Bordeaux’s Domains Barons de Rothschild, which harvested its third vintage
in 2015. Based on Rothschild’s previous successes in California and Chile,
Shandong Province is a region to keep an eye on.
In just the past decade, China has become one of the
world’s top ten wine markets, and is actually the largest consumer of red wine
in the world, as well as being the sixth largest producer of wine. Between 2006
and 2015, China’s wine consumption grew by 54 percent. According to Sotheby’s,
it is no longer London or New York but Hong Kong which is now the world’s
largest market for fine wines at auction. Furthermore, China is one of the
world’s biggest consumers of Bordeaux’s Premier Cru wines, and has had a
significant effect on the price structure. Chinese billionaires have long had a
predilection for Château Lafite (like the English aristocracy before them),
followed by Château Latour, Château Mouton-Rothschild, Château Margaux and
finally by Château Haut-Brion. This preference for Lafite has had the
unfortunate consequence of making Lafite the most popular target of
international wine-fraud, resulting in a number of recent scandals and
uncertainty in the Chinese market. There is a growing tendency among Chinese
billionaires, therefore, to focus on the previously overlooked Château
Haut-Brion wines (Jefferson’s favorite), because its unique bottle shape makes
it more difficult for criminals to reproduce.
But despite China’s seeming integration into the
international wine market, it retains certain Chinese idiosyncrasies. For
example, the reason that Chinese are almost exclusively red wine drinkers has
less to do with their appreciation of tannins and more to do with red being a
lucky color traditionally associated with good fortune and good health. The
Chinese still serve wine in small, shot-sized wine glasses, and, although it is
a sign of progress that wine is replacing strong baijiu spirits at business
banquets, it means that when that priceless 1959 Château Lafite is being
poured, all the guests can toss it back in a hearty group toast without even
needing to taste it.
