Breathing Fire – The Wine Dragon Raises its Head

The wine industry in China has undergone a remarkable transformation in an astonishingly short period of time. While most European wine regions are defined by slow, organic development over generations, China has advanced at near warp speed, writes Joel B. Payne, who visited the Middle Kingdom for Sommelier India

Little more than a decade ago, when I wrote my first article on Chinese wines for Sommelier India, the country’s reputation for fine crus was, at best, marginal. Today, however, its leading estates are bottling wines that stand comfortably alongside established classical benchmarks. Moreover, they are also beginning to develop a broader market for their labels, in many cases at prices that make even well-known European winemakers turn green with envy.

I began visiting Chinese wineries in 2010. In the ensuing years, I have visited 37 estates and tasted thousands of wines. China’s vineyard landscape, like its vaunted industry, has now entered a dynamic new phase, with regions such as Ningxia, Shangri-La, Shandong and Xinjiang coming into fuller bloom with each vintage.

After a brief pause during the pandemic, I travelled to China with Michel Bettane, France’s most influential wine journalist. In 2025, we tasted about 300 of the country’s finest wines at the China Wine Challenge, which was held at Julan Li, a beautiful French colonial villa near Beijing’s historic centre. Before the event, we also visited several estates in Shandong and Huailai. Afterwards, for good measure, we journeyed onwards to northwestern Yunnan, high in the Himalayan foothills near the border with Tibet, and only a short drive from India, where we tasted another selection of wines from Shangri-La.

It is now clear to me that leading estates such as Jade, Silver Heights, Xige and Ao Yun, among others, are redefining how the world assesses China’s quality. Moreover, new producers continue to emerge each year, showing wines that can compete at a similarly high level. The first releases of Château Mihope in Ningxia are a perfect example of this.

Interestingly, women have had a large impact on this development. In addition to Judy Chan at Grace, both Emma Gao at Silver Heights and Emma Deng at Jade have been at the forefront of this qualitative progress.

Today, Chinese vineyards occupy a singular place in the national landscape: vast in scale, ambitious in vision and increasingly confident in their own identity. China now has 756,000 hectares under vine, making it the third largest vineyard area in the world. India, to put things in perspective, has only 185,000 hectares. However, as in India, owing to China’s long tradition of table grape cultivation, only a portion of this expanse is currently dedicated to wine production. Industry insiders believe that only about 140,000 hectares, mostly in the northern part of the country, have been planted solely to produce wine – as opposed to India’s 34,000 hectares used for wine production – a number that is larger than the vineyard area of Germany and Austria combined.

With that vineyard potential, China produced nearly 2.65 million hectoliters of wine in 2024, or roughly 350 million bottles, placing it 15th globally, ahead of better-known origins such as New Zealand. Moreover, the country’s entry into the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) in that same year further underscores its ambition to be recognized as a major player in the global wine sector.

Fostering this drive is a remarkable architectural trend. In the early years of this century, as producers sought to signal prestige, heritage and luxury to a domestic audience newly discovering fine wine, vast estates began building wineries to resemble French châteaux, Tuscan villas or even palaces from a Walt Disney film. The result was an extraordinary landscape of grand façades, multiple turrets, sweeping staircases and manicured gardens that often look more like film sets or theme parks than working wineries.

These estates were specifically designed for tourism, blending winemaking with spectacle. Some even became destinations with hotels, museums and elaborate tasting halls that draw thousands of visitors each year, while anchoring their wines in the visual language of Old World tradition. Even as the industry now slowly shifts toward more restrained expressions, these architectural statements remain a fascinating chapter in the story of modern Chinese wine.

Not surprisingly, in light of these developments, and much like in the United States, domestic consumption continues to drive the industry’s momentum. Today, while Indians drink only about a spoonful of wine per person each year, the Chinese manage nearly half a bottle. Given the country’s population, this makes China the seventh largest wine consuming nation in the world. Moreover, although its viticultural potential is still not fully realized, the market for Chinese wine is immense. If every Chinese restaurant worldwide offered just one Chinese white and one Chinese red by the glass, production would need to triple overnight.

The geography of Chinese wine is as dramatic as it is diverse. Its vineyards stretch from the deserts of Xinjiang in the west, on the border with Kazakhstan, to the coast of Shandong in the east, where monsoons sometimes wreak havoc. From the windswept plains of the north in Ningxia on the Mongolian frontier, they extend south to the high Himalayan terraces of Yunnan, not far from India. This is why, over the course of three days at the annual Wine Challenge, we tasted wines from 14 distinct regions, underscoring the remarkable breadth of China’s viticultural landscape.

In terms of grape varieties, China remains anchored in international classics. Cabernet Sauvignon continues to dominate red plantings, while Chardonnay is the most widely grown white. Yet many of the country’s most compelling wines now emerge from blends or from varieties better adapted to more extreme conditions. In Yunnan, for instance, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc ripen at altitudes reaching 3,000 metres, yielding wines of striking aromatic intensity. In Ningxia, Bordeaux blends also remain common, but Syrah, Cabernet Gernischt and Marselan are gaining ground as producers explore alternatives better suited to the region’s continental climate.

With barely 10% of total volume, white wines have long played only a minor role on the import charts. However, Sauvignon Blanc and Riesling have shown surprising growth. Moreover, domestic production has long been well over one-third white, indicating that while the Chinese may buy a foreign red wine for gifting, they nonetheless do enjoy whites as a tipple at home with friends.

Interestingly, even varieties not generally associated with China, like Petit Manseng, Viognier and Arneis can be surprisingly good, as the 2023 Petit Manseng Sea Breeze Reserve from the Longting Estate in Shandong, the 2024 Jia Yuan Viognier from Silver Heights in Ningxia and the 2019 Arneis Reserva from Summerland in Gansu adequately attest. Perhaps even more surprising, especially for a market that has shown only modest interest in natural wines, was the 2022 Rkatsiteli Orange from Puchard Vineyard in Xinjiang that I tasted at the China Wine Challenge. In spite of such rare pearls, Chardonnay remains the largest white wine category. Many are rather nondescript, but there are also outstanding wines that need not blush in a flight of white Burgundy.

Cabernet Sauvignon, with its 60,000 hectares, dominates both the vineyards and the wine merchant’s shelves. Two grape varieties increasingly viewed as China’s unique selling propositions are Marselan and Cabernet Gernischt, with distinct regional styles which are emerging as signature expressions, much like Malbec in Mendoza, Zinfandel in California or Pinotage in Stellenbosch.

Of the two, Marselan is in fact a relatively young cultivar, created only in 1961 by Paul Truel at the French national agricultural research centre in Montpellier through a cross of Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache. His aim was to develop a grape that combined Cabernet Sauvignon’s disease resistance with Grenache’s generous yields. Officially recognised only in 1991, the variety arrived in China in 2001 with little fanfare and even less credibility. Nonetheless, it has gradually built a strong following, with plantings now approaching 3,500 hectares.

Its initial appeal lies in its resilience. With small berries, deep colour, soft tannins, strong disease resistance in humid conditions and notable heat tolerance, it has proven highly adaptable across China’s broad climatic range and delivers generous yields almost every year. Quietly but steadily, it has taken root and many estates now promote it as a potential vinous signature for China. Thanks to its vivid purple hue, fruit forward profile and supple texture, it resonates with Chinese consumers who are still discovering wine and are eager to embrace a homegrown success story. As Jiayin Liu, who oversees tastings for the China Wine Challenge, noted, local drinkers also have little difficulty with its bold style, which lies somewhere between an Andean Malbec and a Californian Zinfandel. Like those two classics, it is also often accompanied by alcohol levels approaching 16%.

Cabernet Gernischt, by contrast, had already arrived in China in the late 19th century and is now thought to cover roughly 15,000 hectares. Although its name suggests a link to the Cabernet family, the variety is in fact genetically identical to Carmenère, a grape most consumers associate with Chile. Perhaps owing to the leaf-roll virus common in Ningxia, the Chinese expression tends to differ from its South American counterpart. Lighter in colour, aromatically peppery and pleasantly herbal, it is also lower in alcohol.

In spite of the markedly improved quality of these two varieties, the grapes favoured in Bordeaux still play first fiddle in China, with Cabernet Sauvignon leading the category. Unsurprisingly, as in Bordeaux itself, quality ranges from mediocre to excellent, with at the top end some of the finest wines that I encounted over my 10 days in the country.

Among the other varieties commonly found in clarets, I was particularly impressed by some of the Cabernet Francs I was shown. While those from from Grace, Jade, and Nine Peaks were all very good, my favourite was the 2022 Ren from Renyi Yuan in Ningxia. Given the intense summer heat waves typical of continental China, I did not expect much from the Merlots, yet Jade Vineyard in Ningxia proved me wrong with its excellent 2020 Reserve.

The 2023 Bird’s Nest Petit Verdot from Silk Road Vineyards in Xinjiang and the 2020 Hong Fan Yin Malbec from Rong Yuan Mei in Ningxia rounded out my selection of the most interesting offerings in the broader Bordeaux inspired category. However, it was a Cabernet Merlot blend that ultimately, as Michel Bettane commented, stole the show on our trip: the 2020 Grand Vin from Xiaoling in Yunnan.

It is presumed that Confucius drank wine from Shandong, but fermented grape juice only regained a foothold in China when the diplomat Zhang Bishi founded his winery in Yantai in 1892, using cuttings imported from Europe. Known today as the Changyu Pioneer Winery, it is the country’s oldest and largest producer. Today, however, it is quality rather than volume that shapes the ambitions of China’s leading estates.

More than 700 wineries operate across China, but only around 200 account for the lion’s share of total production. Yet less than two dozen truly play, to borrow a phrase from sports, in the first division. Most of these leading estates were founded within the past 30 years, backed by substantial investment in modern viticulture, precision irrigation, advanced cellar technology and access to higher quality oak – all developments that have accelerated improvements in both consistency and finesse. While India’s growth has been driven more by entrepreneurial pioneers, and a few partnerships, rather than by large-scale foreign investment, China’s advantage is its depth of capital and the willingness to underwrite infrastructure in the form of irrigation, frost protection and research. Nonetheless, its challenge remains to translate that into a coherent, recognizable style.

Among the country’s finest estates, several names consistently rise to the top and were among my favourites in the blind tastings. Innovative producers such as Fermentation, Petit Mont, Xiao Pu and Lingering Clouds are helping to establish Yunnan as one of China’s most dynamic wine regions, but Ao Yun, backed by the clout of Moët Hennessy, has certainly become the nation’s most internationally recognised winery from Shangri-La. It is, however, at over €300 a bottle, not China’s most expensive wine. That honour belongs, at almost €700 a crack, to Lafite Rothschild’s Domaine de Long Dai in Shandong, which emerged as a star from the moment its inaugural 2017 vintage was released.

Along the eastern slopes of the Helan Mountains in Ningxia, wines such as the savoury Emma’s Reserve from Silver Heights, the polished Messenger Reserve from Jade Vineyard, the Jade Dove Reserve Cabernet Gernischt from Xige Estate and the Jia Bei Lan Reserve from Helan Qingxue have likewise established themselves as dependable benchmarks. Meanwhile, in Shanxi, the Chairman’s Reserve from Grace Vineyard remains one of China’s most respected family-run estate wines, admired for its consistency and stylistic restraint.

In spite of China’s progress, other hurdles remain. Climate extremes – harsh winters in Ningxia, monsoons in Shandong and drought in Xinjiang – demand costly vineyard management, including the labour-intensive practice of burying vines for winter protection in many northern regions. Market volatility and the persistent preference for imported wines among affluent consumers also shape production strategies. Yet, alongside a steadily deepening wine culture in urban China – where younger drinkers are showing greater interest in domestic wines, encouraged by rising quality and a growing sense of national pride – the resilience and adaptability of Chinese producers suggest that the industry is well positioned to navigate these obstacles.

Vast vineyard resources, expanding technical expertise and a new generation of ambitious estates have propelled China into the ranks of the world’s most intriguing wine producing nations. As quality continues to rise and regional styles become more clearly defined, China’s finest wines are now far better positioned than those of Japan or India not only to compete internationally, but also to reshape expectations of what Asia can achieve.