China Uncorked
Compounding this problem is a shortage of local winemaking talent. “Given that the wine industry is still very new, there aren’t many experienced people in this industry,” notes Judy Leissner. “For the locally trained talents, the main issue is their exposure – not many can afford or have the opportunity to try a wide range of wines.” Emma Gao echoes this sentiment. “While much progress has been realised in winemaking over the past 20 years, China still lacks the depth of winemaking experience witnessed in more developed production areas,” she says. Fortunately, a recent trend has emerged of more foreign-trained Chinese, including Gao herself, returning from Europe, Australia and North America with much needed education and experience.
The immaturity of China’s wine consumer market is another major hindrance to development – most buyers tend to purchase based on image or brand, rather than taste. “It’s a really tough market to be honest,” Leissner admits. “Grace was lucky as we had a head-start. It’s definitely not easy for small wineries to survive in China given that the consumers are so brand-driven.” Education is the key – over time, with a greater understanding of wine, consumers will evolve more discerning tastes. Lu Yang, the award-winning Penfolds' Sommelier Champion who practices his trade at The Peninsula Shanghai, is sanguine. “With more and more sophisticated Chinese wine lovers, they will crave more high-quality Chinese wines,” he says. “The market is there, but it would be a mistake to rush into it in the hopes of making instant profit. Patience is a virtue.”
The list of challenges ahead for the industry is clearly daunting, but the potential for reward is equally immense. It’s these opportunities that have been attracting wineries from around the world. Torres of Spain was one of the first to dip their toe into the terroir of China, experimenting with a tiny vineyard in Hebei back in 1997. That project was abandoned after only one year, but by 2008 they were back in the local winemaking game after Torres China General Manager Alberto Fernandez discovered Grace wines in a Beijing restaurant and immediately travelled to the vineyard to develop a partnership. The resulting collaboration is the ‘Symphony Series’, praised by Jancis Robinson as “a minor miracle”. Fernandez personally believes that both local and foreign investment is set to explode, “We’ve opened the door with the success of Grace,” he says.
The highest profile addition to the market came early last year with the announcement that Château Lafite Rothschild, with backing from state-owned investment company CITIC, would open a vineyard in Shandong Province – ambitiously promising a future ‘Chinese Grand Cru’. While this move was shocking to some segments of the industry, Decanter magazine’s Steven Spurrier says, “Lafite would be crazy not to do what they are doing, the opportunities in this market are simply too vast to ignore.”
There’s a long way to go before 2058, when we will know whether the Future of Wine Report's predictions come to fruition, or are ultimately dismissed as fiction, but regardless of the outcome the Chinese industry is ready to make its mark. As Lu Yang assuredly predicts, “I am confident that we will find magical patches of land somewhere that can and will produce world-class wines from China.”
