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Ningxia epitomizes China’s resolve to establish a modern wine epicenter in the East, and with recent guidelines issued by the government to lift the region’s wine trade, there will be a lot more happening on the plains of the Gobi Desert. But even though the north-central part of the country is churning out rich, generous and excellent wines, we couldn’t stop asking ourselves: Is it the wonderland for great wines from China?

Although some see parallels between Ningxia and the well-established Bordeaux, the one place in China that might bear a better resemblance to the classic French wine-growing region is Huailai, which lies just to the west of China’s teeming capital, Beijing. Forty wineries are scattered throughout the region, which is set amid gently rolling hills and the gigantic Guanting Reservoir.

Although producers have been making wine here since the 1970s, it has only been over the past few years that local, mostly independent makers have started pulling off staggering, world-class wines. For a long time, producers in Huailai, such as Martin Vineyard, bought grapes from local farmers and sold bulk wine to a few wine conglomerates, including the state-owned GreatWall, Dynasty and Changyu.

“We realized that the sun was setting in our relationship with COFCO GreatWall and started converting our company from a fermenting plant for GreatWall to a smaller, independent winery with a cellar,” said Tian Jiang, the owner of Martin Vineyard, referring to GreatWall’s parent company, China Oil and Foodstuffs Corporation.

Back then, red grapes had only a minimal presence in Huailai, and China’s wine industry as a whole was dominated by white wine. Tian said the winds of change at the time – the early 2000s, just after Hong Kong had been returned to China – convinced him and others that red wines were the way to go.

With the country falling out of its fleeting love for white wine, Martin Vineyard’s relationship with GreatWall became complicated. A company that had once been the largest in Asia in terms of amount of wine fermented bled money for the last five years of its relationship with GreatWall. It was not until around 2008 that Tian and his brother finally decided to transform their fermentation plant into a smaller, independent winery and make wines with their own grapes.

“2015 was the last year we worked with COFCO GreatWall, and the cooperation came to an end when COFCO unloaded its shares in the company in 2018,” Tian said.

Drinking habits in China were already evolving owing to the influence of the more Westernized Hong Kong, with its booming popular entertainment scene. Names like Bordeaux and Lafite were popping up with regularity on TV and cinema screens in both Hong Kong and China. Soon enough, China was showing its own love for dry red wine, or “Gan Hong,” as it is known in Mandarin.

THE RISE OF RED WINE

At the time, China’s “reform and opening up” campaign was in full swing. It joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and in 2004 wine tariffs were slashed from 41.6 percent to 14 percent, which lifted consumer demand. The same year, the production of “half-base wine” – basically wine with heavy additions of water, sugar, pigments and flavor additives – was outlawed.

The flood of wine imports resulting from these changes started to affect the Chinese palate, which, as it turns out, was perfectly amenable to dry red wine. In fact, it was almost perfect for China, reflecting the country’s fashionable, internationalized turn. Through its color alone, red wine symbolized the luck, liveliness and prosperity that are the calling cards of Chinese consumer aspirations. Red wine also made a perfect gift for Lunar New Year holidays’ visits to family and friends.

Today, the priority of Martin Vineyard is to make wines of supreme quality. Their cabernet franc and petite sirah from the 2016 vintage are the stars in the winery’s lineup, but their tempranillo, marselan and cabernet gernischt are also impressive. Wine aside, Martin Vineyard’s winemaking history is Huailai’s writ large, if not China’s.

Its success with varietal diversity reflects Huailai’s great potential. Sandwiched by two mountains, Huailai’s terroir is diverse. The Huaizhuo Basin gives the region a wide spectrum of topographies and altitudes, ranging from 400 meters to over 1,000 meters, which explains why there is less homogeneity in grape varieties. Cultivars range from the popular cabernet sauvignon to merlot, marselan, syrah, pinot noir, tempranillo, chardonnay, riesling and the local longyan grape – as well as the late-harvested petit manseng.

Winemakers told me that all these varieties could show well if suitable terroir were allocated within the region. The Guanting Reservoir provides a blanket of moisture for the nearby vineyards. The sunlight here is abundant (averaging over 2,800 hours a year), and the diurnal range in the growing season is wide, which helps grapes retain their natural acidity and balance. With an average rainfall of 400mm a year, irrigation isn’t always necessary for the older vines.