By Jim Boyce | Ten years after it started. Lafite finally named its project in Shandong: Long Dai. The wines are slated to go on sale in September and be delivered in November. I wrote about the name—pronounced as Long Die—here. And a much longer piece for Wine Searcher here.
That longer piece includes quite a bit about how the China market has changed during the past decade. From the early days of generous state-owned enterprise entertainment accounts, which covered top wines, to today’s scene where the austerity campaign is largely in force. From quality local wines being few and far between to there being dozens of operations making worthy wines. From Lafite being the most faked brand to, well, not much has changed except Penfolds has risen to be a challenger for that title. Etc.
In general, it’s not 2009 any more and Long Dai isn’t your uncle’s Lafite.
Anyway, you can find more on that, some of the challenges of making wine in Shandong and some early reviews of the wine here.
Sign up for the Grape Wall newsletter here. Follow Grape Wall on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And see my sibling sites World Marselan Day, World Baijiu Day and Beijing Boyce. Grape Wall has no advertisers, so if you find the content useful, please help cover the costs via PayPal, WeChat or Alipay. Contact Grape Wall via grapewallofchina (at) gmail.com.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.