Not all Chinese Wine is Rice Wine

by Greville Havenhand, who is a member of the Dulwich Wine Society

It is popularly thought that Chinese wine is merely rice wine or that strong, sweet concoction of grape and grain called wine that visitors to China were given along with the fiery spirit Mao Tai at “banquets”.

When I was there in the seventies and eighties I didn’t realise that there was a wine industry. I was wrong. The first archaeological evidence of wine making there was in 212 B.C. This continued through the centuries with mainly a small native grape “vitis thunbergii”. Towards the end of the nineteenth century a government official returned from his travels with vines of the usual wine species – “vitiis vinifera” – and he set up a winery with the Austrian Consul as his winemaker. It was a time of European settlement and involvement in the country and the Germans established a winery then know as Melco and French Catholics started what is now known as the Beijing winery. These, though, were mainly making wine for the large foreign population.

Wine drinking is still a minority activity. Annual consumption is a mere 0.2 litres per head. The newly affluent in Shanghai and Guadong drink imported wine – the more prestigious the name the better. Be that as it may, China is now the fifth largest producer in the world and is set to become the largest by 2050.

So what of the wines? They are a mixed bag. 400 wineries cannot all get it right, especially as a lot of them use imported grape juice or unsuitable local grapes. A decade ago the best I could say for the admittedly few Chinese wines that I had tasted was “interesting”, “shows a little promise.” But investment from companies like Remy-Cointreau, Seagrams and Pernod-Ricard has introduced international wine makers and modern methods and equipment and has raised the quality beyond recognition, although there are still no signs of great or even really top class wines.

One of the largest producers is Great Wall, now around a quarter of a century old. Based mainly in Hebei province it has a vast range of wines, many of which are exported, mainly for use in Chinese restaurants. As with much of China, quality has improved. Some of their early reds were well below standard, but they now have improved – notably the Syrah. They make an aromatic off dry white from the indigenous Dragon’s eye grape. It is being served at the Gallery’s Chinese themed LATE night opening on 19 June and at Gallery Film’s showing of the Chinese film ‘Curse of the Golden Flower’ on June 16. Judge it for yourself”

My favourite is a Chardonnay from the Huadong company which is now partly owned by a subsidiary of Allied Domecq. It is more like a New World Chardonnay than a Burgundy with perhaps a little too much oak but with good fruit.

The winery has an interesting story. In the mid Nineteen Eighties an English wine merchant from Hong Kong decided that a peninsula in Shandong province in North Eastern China would be the ideal site for a vineyard. He imported 40,000 vines from Europe. They were planted in what he hoped would be China’s finest vineyard. After little more than a year the whole lot were destroyed in a typhoon. Ever the optimist, he replanted, but went bankrupt in the process. Refusing to give up, he found new partners. Alas he never lived to see how successful his project became. His ashes were spread in the vineyard. Interestingly the estate is now run by two Chinese women, Liu Hong Mei, who got an MBA from Cardiff, looks after management and Gloria Xiu learned her considerable winemaking skills from Australians.

There are not many Chinese wines on sale here but Bibendum Wines have a red and a white made by Austrian winemaker Lenz Moser for the “Noble Dragon” label. The red is smooth and fruity, made with Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and a grape called Dragon’s Eye – it would go well with Peking Duck and Spareribs. The white is quite aromatic and a good match for most Chinese food. Morrisons claims to be the only supermarket with Chinese Wines, with two from the “Silk Road” company. There are others to be had here and there, especially in the large Chinese supermarkets