01.31.08

Starting up: Three challenges of a joint venture winery in China

Posted in Alain Leroux at 5:22 pm by admin

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- By Alain Leroux

I came to China in 1996 to head the technical side of the joint venture between Bernard Taillan France and Beijing’s Sanyang Group. We have faced many challenges over the past 12 years. Here are three of the biggest in the beginning.

The first challenge was human resources. Initially, we built a bottling room and imported wine from France, to be distributed in China by our sales department and with assistance from our local partner. In 1997, we started importing bulk wine and bottling in China. The problem is that the local staff had little experience and sold wine on consignment. This made it difficult to collect revenue.

We had too many people and an expensive office in the city. In June 2000, the board put me in charge of operations, we stopped the consignment strategy and we drastically reduced our sales staff. Now, we have 15 people, an appropriate number for our activities. We try to focus on the technical side. We have one salesperson and I also try to sell our wine. Many people know our wine by word of mouth.

The second challenge we faced were high sales targets. In the beginning, the proposal was 4 million bottles in annual sales within three years. The third-year sales were to include wine made from our own grapes, with the idea being to plant 1000 hectares. Bernard Taillan France had different ideas about sales strategy. We ended up keeping 20 hectares and continued to experiment with our grapes.

This brings us to the third challenge: equipment. We were growing and experimenting with grapes in small batches, but didn’t have ideal winemaking equipment for this. If you visit wineries in China, most have big tanks capable of handling 60 tons. There are a few exceptions, with some smaller five-ton tanks, such as Dragon Seal, and we made some wine there. Later, my staff and I created a small press. I didn’t buy a crusher / de-stemmer. We did this part by hand, or rather foot, and then did the fermentation in our own tanks.

Previously by Alain Leroux:
Pruning in Beijing: The battle against cold
Small haul in Beijing: Hot moist weather affects production

12.18.07

Pruning in Beijing: The battle against cold

Posted in Alain Leroux at 1:13 pm by admin

- By Alain Leroux 

One of the big challenges of making wine in Beijing is pruning the vines. Due to the warmer weather this year, we began pruning at Taillan one month later than usual, starting on November 7 and finishing on November 29.

We plant our vines in depressions. This allows for irrigation and it makes burial of the vines easier.

In order to bury the vines, we prune them to two branches. This allows us to bend the branches against the ground and cover them with 40 centimeters of soil.

(Before, our local workers would prune the vines like they were trees, creating a fan of branches. This made it too difficult to bend and bury the branches.)

Bending and burying is not a typical way to treat vines. The reason we do it is to protect them from Beijing’s cold winter. The vines freeze at -16 degrees Celsius and we sometimes have night temperatures of -20 degrees Celsius.

If the weather continues as last year, when it was -7 degrees Celsius at night, we won’t have to bury the vines. We also won’t have to prune before winter. Instead, we can do it in March, which is better for the vines, and for the grapes, too.

As we say in France : “You can prune early, or you can prune late, but best to prune in the middle.” Nothing is better than March pruning.

11.10.07

Grape Wall of China 2.0: Alain Leroux

Posted in Alain Leroux at 11:02 am by admin

Grape Wall of China will soon begin including contributions from ten people involved in the Greater China wine scene as academics, wine-makers, distributors, educators or consumers. To kick things off, I will post a profile each day. (For more China wine info, join the Grape Wall of China group on Facebook and/or sign up for my free e-newsletter by emailing beijingboyce@yahoo.com with “sign me up” in the subject line.)

Today’s profile: Alain Leroux
Main focus: Wine industry

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“Hailing from France, Alain Leroux has been general manager of Taillan winery, just outside Beijing in Hebei province, for a dozen years. Taillan, a Sino-French joint venture, produces its owns wine and does bottling for other makers and distributors.”