Understanding Chinese Wine

Are you a wine professional or serious wine enthusiast who wants to learn more about Chinese wine?  You’ve come to the right blog!

China as a wine region is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.  Over the last two decades the country has established a number of important wineries in key regions.  Following the success of these wineries, international attention (and curiosity) has garned ever growing hype. 

International recognition of China as a key premium wine producing region of the world has been increasing for over a decade.  As far back as 2007, the blog Grape Wall of China began documenting the local wine scene in English. This was followed by the 2009 Jiabeilan Grand Reserve winning the International Trophy at the Decanter World Wine Awards.  Many award winning boutique wineries were also established in the late naughties.

Moving into this decade, the Chinese wine scene has continued to establish itself as the world’s next major fine wine producing country.  Helan Quexian Winery, which produced the Jiabeilan, has continued to impress international critics. Furthermore, wines from other producers, including Chateau Nine Peaks and Zhongfei wineries, have also been favourably reviewed by international critics, including Jancis Robinson.

With growing favorable reviews, Chinese wines are starting to make an international impression.  At least two companies, Sino Vino Imports in Australia and Panda Fine Wines in the UK, exclusively import Chinese wines to their respective countries.  Supermarket giant Tesco has even stocked Chinese wine in its UK stores.

Interestingly, even though Chinese wines are generating buzz there is still very little information written about them in English.  The blog Grape Wall of China continues to write interesting articles about the local Chinese wine scene and Decanter has an extensive archive of articles about Chinese wines.  Unfortunately neither of these blogs write exclusively about Chinese wines and both include domestic wine trends, events and cultural analysis that international consumers may not be interested in.

The other two major English language sources for information on Chinese wine are Jancis Robinson and Hugh Johnson’s World Atlas of Wine and Janet Wang’s The Chinese Wine Renaissance.  For wine professionals there remains two key problems: the former only covers Chinese wines in about 3 pages of a 400+ page book while the latter is more a cultural analysis for China academics than a business resource for wine professionals.

This blog closes the gap.  It’s for serious wine professionals and enthusiasts-- sommeliers, wine buyers and wine collectors-- who want to become informed of Chinese wine including its major regions, styles, trends and wineries. This will allow you to make educated purchasing and service decisions as these wines inevitably become internationally accessible in the coming years.

干杯 !