Chinese Wine in 5 Minutes: Everything You Need to Know

Five minutes, seven questions. By the end, you will know more about Chinese wine than most wine lovers in Europe.

1. Does China really make wine?

Yes, and on a huge scale. China has one of the three largest areas under vine in the world, behind only Spain and France. A good part of those grapes end up on the table rather than in a bottle, but the wine industry is real, modern and growing in ambition. Its roots are ancient: fermented drinks in China date back 9,000 years, and the wine grape arrived along the Silk Road over two thousand years ago.

2. Where is it made?

Wine grapes grow almost everywhere in China, but seven regions matter most:

• Ningxia: the star. A high desert plain at the foot of the Helan Mountains, home to the country's most acclaimed boutique estates.
• Xinjiang: the far west. Oases, deserts and some of the sunniest vineyards on Earth.
• Shandong: the historic coast, around Yantai and Penglai, where modern Chinese wine was born in 1892.
• Hebei: the hills near Beijing and the Great Wall.
• Yunnan: vineyards at dizzying altitude in the Himalayan foothills.
• Gansu: the ancient Hexi Corridor, the Silk Road itself.
• Shanxi: the loess plateau, home to one of China's pioneering family wineries.

3. Which grapes?

Cabernet Sauvignon is king, followed by Merlot and Cabernet Gernischt (a grape later identified as Carmenère). But the grape to remember is Marselan, a French cross that is almost unknown in Europe and has found in China a second home, and perhaps a national identity. White wines are rarer, mostly Chardonnay, Riesling and Petit Manseng. In the cold north-east, China also makes ice wine.

4. What does it taste like?

Most Chinese wine is dry and red. The best examples from Ningxia and Xinjiang show ripe dark fruit from the intense sunshine, balanced by freshness from cold nights and high altitude. Think of the fruit of the New World with a structure that often reminds European tasters of Bordeaux. From Yunnan's mountains come some of the most concentrated and ambitious wines in Asia.

5. Is it any good?

The best of it, very. In 2011 a red from Ningxia, Jia Bei Lan 2009, won an International Trophy at the Decanter World Wine Awards in London, the first Chinese wine ever to reach that level. Since then, Chinese wines have collected medals every year, and some of France's most famous wine families have invested in China.

But quality varies enormously. At the lower end of the market, some wines labelled as Chinese are blended with imported bulk wine. The rule is simple: look for estate-grown wines from named producers and named regions. That is exactly what we map for you on this site.

6. Why now?

Here is the paradox. Wine consumption inside China has been falling since the late 2010s, and younger Chinese drinkers are buying less wine than their parents. The Chinese producers who make the best wine therefore have a strong reason to look for new markets: us. For European wine lovers, this is a rare moment. A whole new wine country is opening its doors, and its best bottles are only beginning to arrive.

7. Where should I start?

Start with a red from Ningxia: it is the clearest introduction to what China does best. Then try a Marselan, to taste something you cannot really find anywhere else. When you are ready, go further: a high-altitude red from Yunnan, a white from Shandong, a desert wine from Xinjiang. Our Wineries section tells you who makes what, and which bottles you can actually find in Europe.

In one sentence

China is one of the world's biggest vineyard nations, its best wines can stand next to Bordeaux, and the moment to discover them is now.