17/03/2019 China’s morning after: end of the wine boom | Financial Times

Opinion FT Magazine
China’s morning after: end of the wine boom
After the heady years of the early 2000s, producers face some hard realities

JANCIS ROBINSON

© Leon Edler

Jancis Robinson MARCH 15, 2019

Wandering round the dusty, cavernous cellars of Chateau Junding in China’s eastern province of
Shandong, it struck me that the place symbolises what has happened to Chinese wine over the
past few years.

During the heady years of the country’s wine boom, in the early 2000s, this vast winery, hotel
and golf course complex, with its 400 hectares of vineyards and a village-worth of buildings, was
the showcase winery of the state-owned Cofco conglomerate. Judging by the photographs of
boozy businessmen and state officials on display, the director of Chateau Junding used the
cellars and dining rooms heavily for entertaining.

Then, in 2012, President Xi cracked down on “gifts” and the lushing up of government officials
and business associates. In 2016, Chateau Junding, presumably already the rather ghostly,
down-at-heel edifice it is today, was put up for sale for just Rmb1, to include the assumption of
debts totalling Rmb392m (£42m at the then exchange rate).

Amazingly, they managed to sell it — to Wang Yihan, who is responsible for China’s biggest art
fair. She seemed slightly daunted by the responsibility of running this enormous operation,
telling me a few weeks ago that she’d bought it only because her husband is from Yantai, the

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nearest city. We ate lunch in a rotunda at a table swagged with crimson satin that would easily
seat 24.

It has been three years since I went on a scouting trip to China and it definitely feels as though
the boom years are over. Sipping wine has been a huge social signifier in modern, urban China,
marking the adoption of western ways and rather different to the old baijiu spirit drinking and
the tradition of stupefying ganbei, or toasts.

Last time I was in Shanghai, it seemed that new bars and salons for wine collectors were opening
all over the place, even amid tales of unsold, overpriced bordeaux classed growths sitting in
warehouses.

Statistics suggested that China had come from nowhere to be the world’s biggest consumer of
wine, its second most important grower of grapevines and one of its most important producers.
Now, in a faltering economy, China’s producers are having to get used to a different direction of
travel.

At last month’s China Wine Summit in Shanghai, Zuming Wang, vice general-secretary of the
China Alcohol Circulation Association, pulled no punches: “We think we’re the world’s fifth-
biggest wine producer, and so does the world, but we’re not. Internal statistics are misleading.”
There are signs of slackening domestic demand for wine. He also warned that China’s big
companies had found it much more difficult to make money out of wine than they had thought
initially and were in retreat.

CITIC, the state-owned investment company, is no longer involved with a new venture in
Shandong initiated by China’s favourite bordeaux first growth Château Lafite. Many Chinese
wine importers have gone out of business recently, as the market, admittedly overcrowded, has
become much more cautious.

Thanks partly to cunningly negotiated free-trade agreements, Australia and Chile are
challenging France as the leading exporter to China, with wines that are much cheaper than the
red bordeaux that was the Chinese staple choice between 2000 and 2015. (Burgundy is all the
rage now and, because quantities are so limited, Chinese demand is having a perceptible effect
on prices.)

Bernard Burtschy, a French statistician-turned-wine writer, gave a presentation at the summit

that used all his skills at ferreting out elusive facts. He said only about 10 per cent of China’s
vineyards are devoted to wine production, with most supplying table grapes. If he’s right,
China’s wine-dedicated vineyards are only about the 20th most extensive in the world, rather
than the second.

He has also researched the dramatic variation in average yields between rainy, not to say sub-
monsoonal Shandong — where vineyards produce as much as 135 hectolitres a hectare (hl/ha)

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on average — and dangerously dry Ningxia and Xinjiang, which produce just 16 hl/ha and 25
hl/ha, respectively.

He reckoned the average national yield is still pretty high, 96 hl/ha, but even that would mean
that China’s annual wine production only comes to about 8.4 million hl in an average year, less
than either Germany’s or South Africa’s (and it has been falling for the past four years, because
of that weakening domestic demand).

Burtschy warned the producers that they need to work on assuring their water supply and on
reducing production costs, which he said are twice the global average, due to the expensive need
to bury and then uncover vines to protect them from the fatally low winter temperatures in most
Chinese wine regions.

That’s the rather shrivelled quantitative picture. How about Chinese wine quality? Even though
there have been some well-publicised prosecutions of sellers of counterfeit bordeaux, there is
still too much unreliable wine on the market, particularly at the bottom end. Yantai, where many
wine producers are based, imports vast quantities of cheap wine in bulk.

On each of my eight visits to China, I have tried to taste the best wines available, selected by
trustworthy contacts. The number of producers making decent wine is slowly continuing to
increase but, unless my contacts lead sheltered lives, that number is still quite low for a country
17 times the size of France.

The great majority of wine is still based on Cabernet Sauvignon, which Burtschy reckons
accounts for 63 per cent of all Chinese vines. Merlot and Carmenère are also popular, and there
is a fad for Marselan, a fairly recent crossing of Cabernet Sauvignon with Grenache.

The few whites tend to be Chardonnay or Italian Riesling but the range is broadening and there
are some sweet wines made from Vidal in Inner Mongolia and Petit Manseng around Beijing. I
even encountered a convincing Pinot Noir, made by the award-winning (female) winemaker at
Helan Qingxue in Ningxia.

Chinese wine will get there in the end, just not as fast as we once thought.

Superior Chinese wine producers

These producers have all made some very decent wine, though I cannot vouch for their entire
output. Some good examples are available in Hong Kong, as well as in mainland China, but few
are exported further — except for Changyu Moser XV and Ao Yun, which is offered by the
Bordeaux merchants.

• Ao Yun, Yunnan (LVMH)

• Bolongbao, Beijing

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• Canaan, Hebei
• Chandon, Ningxia (LVMH)
• Changyu Moser XV, Ningxia
• Chateau Sun God, Hebei
• Domaine Franco-Chinois, Hebei
• Grace Vineyard, Shanxi and Ningxia
• Guoan, Xinjiang
• Helan Qingxue, Ningxia
• Helanshan Manor, Ningxia
• Huailai Amethyst Manor, Hebei
• Kanaan, Ningxia
• Martin, Hebei
• Silver Heights, Ningxia

Tasting notes on JancisRobinson.com. Stockists via winesearcher.com

Follow Jancis on Twitter @JancisRobinson

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