China in the new World Atlas of Wine

(JancisRobinson) - One of the more potent symbols of the westernisation of China has been the extent to which the staggeringly numerous Chinese have taken to wine. Consumption is rising at such a rate, estimated at 15% a year, that not just Shanghai and Beijing but the so-called second-tier Chinese cities have become even more popular destinations for French wine exporters than New York and London. So effective has the Bordeaux sales machine been that a considerable proportion of the fortunes recently made in China have been spent on red bordeaux – especially the grandest names and particularly, for a while, the first growth Ch Lafite – with a direct inflationary effect on global wine prices. Then, as the Chinese discovered France’s second most famous red wine, burgundy prices rose, too. China’s new connoisseurs have even begun to invest in foreign wine estates themselves, typically for hard-nosed commercial reasons. According to Bordeaux estate agents Maxwell Storrie Baynes, more than 50 local wine châteaux are already in Chinese hands and demand continues unabated.

The vine is not entirely new to the Chinese however. It was known to gardeners in far western China at least as early as the second century AD when wine, very possibly grape wine, was certainly made and consumed. European grape varieties were introduced to eastern China at the end of the 19th century, but it was only in the late 20th century that grape-based wine insinuated itself into Chinese (urban) society. China’s love affair with grape wine – putaojiu as opposed to mere jiu, meaning any alcoholic drink – was so effectively encouraged by the state, partly in an effort to reduce cereal imports, that according to the most recent OIV [Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin] figures, China’s total vineyard area (including those devoted to fresh and dried grape production) nearly doubled to an estimated 1,384,000 acres (560,000 ha) between 2000 and 2011. Those same figures suggest that China has been the world’s sixth most important wine producer since the turn of the century. Independently verified Chinese statistics are hard to come by, however, and Chinese wine bottlers have notoriously bumped up production with imported wine, grape must, grape concentrate, and even liquids completely unrelated to grapes.

Throughout the early years of this century, it was difficult to find wines labelled as Chinese of any real quality. So fashionable was anything presented to Chinese consumers as a fair copy of red bordeaux (for linguistic and cultural reasons, the average Chinese consumer has so far insisted that wine must be red) that there was little incentive to try very hard. Cabernet Sauvignon, and to a lesser extent Merlot and Cabernet Gernischt (Carmenère), dominated plantings, but wines were typically under ripe and over-oaked. By about 2010, however, a small elite of carefully made, truly Chinese-grown wines finally emerged.