Tiansai is one of the pioneers of the Yanqi Basin, in Xinjiang. Its founder, Chen Lizhong, graduated in law in Beijing and worked as a judge before starting a transport company in 1992. A business trip to the Gobi Desert in 2008 brought her to the Yanqi Basin, beneath the red cliffs of the Tianshan Mountains, and in 2010 she planted her first vines on barren desert land, together with fellow entrepreneur Wang Xiaowei.
A keen photographer, she named the winery after the Tessar camera lens, known in Chinese as 天塞. The winery buildings were designed to evoke a swan with outstretched wings.
Organic in the desert
The estate lies at over 1,100 m, along the trails of the ancient Silk Road, near Bosten Lake, China's largest inland freshwater lake. Winters fall to –25 °C and the vines are buried every year. Tiansai was one of the first wineries in the region to be certified organic; it prefers hiring people to catch pests by hand rather than using pesticides, and harvests entirely by hand. From the first plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in 2010, the vineyard has grown to 187 hectares, with Marselan added in 2014.
A new generation
Chen Lizhong's daughter, Lily Zhu, a graduate of a Bordeaux business school, is the winery's ambassador and streams weekly to around two million followers on Douyin, the Chinese TikTok. Around the winery, Tiansai Town has become a wine tourism destination, close to Korla Airport.