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It would be a mistake to consider China as lacking knowledge about wines. In fact, 9000 years ago, the Chinese already knew how to ferment grape juice, long before Egypt and Greece.

Although under developed and exploited until the beginning of the 80's, nowadays the vine culture is significant and well established. It has found an important place in the wine world. With a consumption of around 700 million litres in 2006, an increase of 36%, this market is also seen as an 'El Dorado', not only by the foreign wine producing countries but also by China itself. Wine becomes a serious matter. You just need to look at the list of sponsors for the Olympic Games in Beijing 2008 to find out a wine brand supporting the event (Great wall).

That's why the Chinese government encourages new plantations and financially supports many of the wineries. . Although many joint-ventures over the past 20 years created wine estates now the majority (Pernod-Ricard, Castel...) have gone and the estates remain public.

This commercial interest in wine has unfortunately lead to mass production, decreasing the quality of many wineries. Moreover, weak legislation does not improve the quality level either. For example a product called "Chinese wine" can be a local wine blended to a foreign bulk, up to 50% (usually overproduction from Australia, Chile or France...). Hopefully, wineries like Dragon Seal who play the card of authenticity by > producing 100% Chinese wine, with great results, will become more common.

The vineyards

The immensity of this country allows many possibilities and experimentations, thanks to its disparity of terroir. For example, ultimately, the production of Ice wines. China should then take more advantage of this natural asset.

Due to the distances between vineyards being so huge and our problem with communication (our Chinese being non-existent and English generally not spoken in the majority of the wineries), we concentrated our visits in the province of Shandong, Hebei and Beijing.

The province of Shandong can be found between Shanghai and Beijing, near the Yellow sea. It is one of the most eastern vineyard in the country. The vineyards are located around the cities of Qingdao and Yantai. Here they grow many grape varieties like the Chardonnay, the Cabernet Sauvignon and the cabernet gernisht.They enjoy a temperate climate with about 800mm rainfall/year. The winter is cooler thanks to the sea influence.

In Yantai we went to visit the Changyu Wine Estate where we discovered the Chinese wine history in itsmuseum. We enjoyed their winery which shows huge potential (more than 200 tanks) and tasted the wines at their Château, which also disposes of a smaller chai for their best wines. In the evening, David of the Export department invited us to taste the wine with sea food, local speciality of Yantai.

Hebei, another wine producing province, is to the south of Beijing and has a high humidity rate (80-90% ) and a colder winter. This climate here does not aid the growth of healthy vines so the human work is very important, crucial, and it is therefore very difficult to keep a sane vineyard. Our visit at the Taillan estate was conducted by the general manager Alain Leroux, who opened some interesting wines from Chardonnay and Malbec. Alain, who has spent more than 11 years in China, described Chinese Wine culture as "chaotic".. >

Finally, in the Beijing province, Dragon Sea elaborates wines with grapes > from the Huailai (150 km north west of Beijing). We met the winemaker and manager of Dragon Seal, Jérôme Sabaté, He explained very well the wine business in China and let us taste his wines, all of which were 100% Chinese. The previous joint venture of Pernod Ricard realize now some very promising wines that are serious and with an interesting future.

In conclusion, the Chinese wine market is growing fast but remains very unstable. Wine is not part of the Chinese culture and is regarded as a luxury product (10 euros minimum for a bottle of wine). People drink mainly red (the colour of happiness in China). We hope that the Chinese government will introduce legislation and increase their effort so as to improve the quality and authenticity of Chinese wines.

More information on www.vinossinfronteras.org

Thanks to all the Chinese wineries participating at the project and to all our partners : JF Hillebrand, Koala Internacional, Dharma Wines, winetourisminfrance.com, Oeneo Bouchage, Andes Wines, Chemins du Sud and Verema.com