By Jim Boyce | Chinese wines won 131 medals, including five “grand golds”, at the Concours Mondial in Beijing this month. The results, published today, also list 46 golds and 80 silvers for China.

That’s a lot of shiny hardware, and just the latest haul for China, but needs to be taken in context as sales of local wines have paled beside those of imports of late. Before I address that, first a look at the grand gold medals (golds and silvers listed at bottom):

This year’s four-day Concours Mondial involved over 9,000 wines and 330 judges from around the world. Of the 481 wines from China, 27 percent won medals, a typical ratio.

Ningxia led with 58 medals—1 grand gold, 27 gold and 30 silver. That’s no surprise as Ningxia makes some of the China’s best wines and enters these contests en masse.

Other top regions / provinces included Xinjiang with 27 medals, Shandong with 17 and Hebei with 14. The medals were spread across ten regions, provinces and cities, including Liaoning, Jilin, Beijing, Gansu, Henan and Yunnan. Here is a regional look at the results:

Chinese wines have been stacking up medals for over a decade, in contests by Decanter, Wine 100, CWSA and others. But the sobering reality is that despite the increasing quality of local wines, producers have steadily lost market share to imports the past few years.

Many consumers distrust local wines because of poor experiences years ago and are now uninterested in giving Chinese producers a chance, especially given they now have access to descent, diverse and inexpensive wines from around the world.

Most good local wine are also very pricey. This is partly due to production costs: in north China, grape growers need to bury their vines each fall to protect them against cold dry winters, an expensive process. But it is also due to marketing strategies that target consumers who link price to quality.

I see Chinese wines in this contest that retails for rmb300 (USD45 / EUR40), rmb00 or even more, winning the same medals as wines from other countries that cost far less. And most of them are Cabernet-driven blends, in a country with a continent’s worth of soil and cliate types.

Those are just a few reasons: I’m working on a longer post now about why Chinese wine sales are so poor and will publish it soon. I also have a few posts coming up about my experiences as a judge at Concours Mondial this year.

Finally, it was nice to see wine made with Marselan do well—one grand gold, six golds and four silvers—given its potential to become “China’s grape”. On that theme, check out my most recent project, World Marselan Day, here and here.

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By Jim Boyce | For the past dozen years, we’ve heard a growing buzz in China about the grape Marselan (马瑟兰)—that’s one reason I started World Marselan Day and why we made it the focus of this year’s Grape Wall Challenge. And that buzz will soon get louder given the tasty wines in the queue.

Prime example: a 2017 barrel sample from Helan Qing Xue (far left). This wine is a portrait in purple. Fresh floral—think violet—and dark berry aromas, along with touches of vanilla and sweet oak, all paired with equally vibrant flavors. Made by Zhang Jing, this Marselan is bursting with personality and might serve the dual purpose of pleasing casual drinkers and experts alike.

Fellow winery Pushang (蒲尚) is already known for its Marselan and a barrel sample from the 2017 vintage suggests less moodiness and more fruit and vibrancy than in 2016. Winemaker Jiang Jing (above) adds a touch of Cabernet Sauvignon to her Marselan but cut it from 10 percent to 5 percent for the 2017 vintages. By the way, Ningxia Marselans can be difficult to find but I did see Pushang’s at Yinchuan airport—in the Xi Xia King wine shop—for rmb298 per bottle.

Our final barrel samples were at the stunningly beautiful Yuanshi. We tried a 100-percent Marselan and a Marselan-Cabernet blend. While some thought the blend had added depth, I was happy with the freshness of the single-variety version: it was less lively than the Helan Qing Xue sample and instead had dustier and darker fruit and a touch of blackcurrant liqueur character. Anyway, we have plenty of wines vying for the hearts of wine experts; we need more that please the palates of the consumer at large.

And there are plenty of more Ningxia Marselans to come given this grape has been planted in recent years by everyone from Pigeon Hill to Helan Mountain (Pernod Ricard) to Li’s Family Vineyard to Changyu-Moser XV, just to name a few. I’ll have lots more on these wines, and Marselans from other parts of China, soon!

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By Jim Boyce | The first World Marselan Day saw wine fans in the United States, Germany, Brazil, Romania, China and elsewhere open bottles from around the planet to celebrate this fascinating grape. The event is held on April 27, the birthday of Paul Truel, who created this cross of Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache in 1961.

Because I only found out Truel’s birth date in early April, there wasn’t much time to prepare for this year’s event, thus making the response even more inspiring.

In Beijing, we featured Marselan in our ninth Grape Wall Challenge, a contest with consumers as wine judges. We tasted wines made along a 3000-km stretch of China, from Shandong and its monsoon climate in the east to Ningxia and Xinjiang and their hot, dry sunny growing seasons in the west. More details here.

In the United States, professors Pierre Ly and Cynthnia Howson marked World Marselan Day with a wine from France.

Meanwhile in Minnesota, Jeff Burrows opened a bottle of Chinese Marselan, from the winery Amethyst in Hebei province, that he recently picked up in Shanghai.

Lauren Walsh aka The Swirling Dervish tried a Marselan from Salton in Brazil and wrote that it “tickled my fancy!”

And Edward Bevan had Marselan from another South American country—Uruguay!—from Bodega Garzon.

In Romania, Mark Dworkin, who has consulted for wineries in China, opened a bottle of locally made Marselan.

Nearby in Germany, Jorg Phillip and Wusana Woo managed to find an organic offering.

And in Brazil, Casa Perini got into the spirit!

There were also, of course, Marselan fans in China, including in Shanghai, where La Galerie celebrated the day.

In Beijing, along with our Grape Wall Challenge, we also used some of our wine to make tasty frozen margaritas aka frozen Mar(selan)garitas. (Reduce the tequila by half and add 90 ml of Marselan. Try this at home!)

I’ve been on the road much of the past month but will gather more photos and wine names and posts more about Marselan soon. That includes a Chinese Marselan brand that, I just learned, was launched on April 27!

Thanks to all who participated in the first World Marselan Day for spreading the word about this grape and this project.

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By Jim Boyce | Cabernet Sauvignon dominates China’s vineyards but a growing number of people believe Marselan will emerge as the nation’s signature grape. We featured Marselan, a cross of Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache, at our ninth annual Grape Wall Challenge on April 26. This is a contest where Chinese consumers serve as wine judges. This year it doubled as a warm-up for the inaugural World Marselan Day on April 27.

The Grape Wall judges hailed from fields as diverse as real estate, marketing, catering and entertainment. They blind-tasted seven Marselans made by wineries along a 3000-kilometer stretch of China, from coastal Shandong to the far west region of Xinjiang.

The judges rated wines as “love it”, “like it”, “dislike it” or “hate it”, wrote a comment about each, and listed their top three. Professor Ma Huiqin, a wine marketing expert at China Agricultural University, then led a post-tasting discussion and pizza feast.

Two wines emerged as favorites. I will stress here our sample size is small and we make no scientific claims about the results. This is just a snapshot from one group of tasters.

Amethyst “Wang Zhu Jing Dian” 2012 (紫晶庄园 “晶灵马瑟兰”) from Hebei province received the highest score and most first-place votes.  Domaine Franco-Chinois 2012 (中法庄园), also made just north of Beijing in Hebei, got the same number of top-five finishes but fewer overall points.

Pushang from Ningxia actually finished second to Amethyst for first-place votes but created much debate among the judges as it tended to be a “love it or hate it” wine.

It was also fun to see each winery receive some love—every brand received multiple “top-three” votes. Again, we make no general claims about the results.

What the tasting did reveal was an intriguing range of Marselan styles as we tasted from Shandong and its monsoon climate in the east to the hot, dry, sunny regions of Ningxia and Xinjiang in the west.

“There are clear differences due to climate,” said professor Ma.

“The wines from Tiansai in Xinjiang and Pushan in Ningxia are obviously plumper, with fuller and juicer fruit. That shows the effect of the heat,” Ma explained. “The wines from further east, from Grace, Amethyst and Domaine Franco Chinois, are more elegant and quite good.”

Ma described Excelsis Marselan from Shandong, the rainiest climate, as “interesting.”

“The first taste is not convincing. The wine seems astringent and thin, with a clear sense of greenness,” she said. But as the wine “breathed”, she said it “made me think”, and it consider it in the context of Italian wines that work well with food.

The overall reaction from the consumers / judges was positive. Marselan tends to deliver fruity, fresh, soft wine that can please everyone from first-timer to aficionados. And while the more elegant wines of Hebei, made with some of the oldest Marselan vines in the country, topped this particular test, there was a good deal of debate about the wines. This simply underscore that there is no “one size fits all” solution to wine but that people need to find what best suits them. We worked on that afterwards as wel all sat down and re-tasted the wines while enjoying pizzas donated by Tube Station.

Finally, we also tried frozen margaritas made using Marselan aka Mar(selan)garitas. Delicious!

Learn more about World Marselan Day here.

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By Jim Boyce | The moody blends of Silver Heights, the brawnier offerings of Helan Qing Xue and the fruit-forward drops of Kanaan: these distinct styles have all helped put Ningxia on the world wine map. And each of these operations has experimented at least once with grapes from a 20-year-old vineyard now used to make wine under the label Legacy Peak.

Legacy Peak is a master class in guanxi, the system of relations that oils the wheels of business. Take Wang Fengyu. He is a key player in Helan Qing Xue, the winery best-known for winning a Decanter regional trophy in 2011. He is also father of Wang Fang, who now runs Kanaan, which quickly made a name for itself. And he encouraged Liu Zhongmin, the father of Legacy Peak owner Liu Shi, to shift from a focus on trees to one on grapes some 20 years ago.

The links to operations like Yuanshi and Silver Heights are more fragile. For example, Silver Heights used grapes from multiple sources, and only once from Legacy Peak, before focusing completely to its own vineyards starting in 2015.

The point is that the wines that put Ningxia on the world wine map, especially in terms of earning medals and glowing reviews, can trace part of their heritage to a few vineyards, including the one planted at Legacy Peak in 1997 with 55 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 30 percent Merlot and 15 percent Chardonnay.

By the way, the elder Liu told us lots of other stories. Like the one about a Mongolian army invading this area, south of the Great Wall, centuries ago and burning everything to the ground, which in turn gave the land a special fertility. And about the royalty buried in the nearby Xi Xia tombs that perhaps also gives the terroir some extra oomph. And about how “Legacy Peak 1246” has meanings related to the Liu family’s name, to the distance of the vineyard from Beijing, and much more.

I’ll write a separate post about all that. And about the wines: especially the Chardonnay, overseen by consultant Zhou Shuzhen and one of my favorites in China.

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By Jim Boyce | We were getting boozy a few weeks back at one of my Beijing locals, Q Bar, and the time seemed ripe to finally work on a red wine-inspired frozen margarita. Owner George Zhou used his house wine, Cadet de Ponty from Canon-Fronsac in Bordeaux, to whip up a tasty cocktail called the WuLaLaGarita.

Zhou has since fine-tuned the recipe, including during World Marselan Day with a version called the Mar(selan)Garita. On Friday, the WuLaLaGarita officially launches alongside a trio of Ponty wines poured by Helene Ponty herself:

• Cadet de Ponty 2016—90 percent Merlot, 10 percent Cabernet—at rmb40.
• Clos Virolle 2014—80 percent Merlot, 20 percent Cabernet Franc—at rmb50.
• Blanc de Grand Reouil 2016—Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon—rmb50.

The bottles get opened and the blenders get revved from 6 PM on the Q Bar rooftop, making this a good week to ease into the weekend. See the official event post here and a Q Bar map here.

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By Jim Boyce | Ningxia winery Kanaan, known for its Wild Pony, Pretty Pony and Black Beauty labels, has put its Riesling and semi-sweet Riesling, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc blend under screw cap. Owner Wang Fang, citing hesitation from hotel clients, says she will wait a year or two before adding the Wild Pony Cabernet-Merlot.

“It is my aim to use screw cap for the entry level wines,” said Wang.

Other wineries that are part of a growing movement toward screw cap include Helan Mountain, the Pernod Ricard project in Ningxia, and Nine Peaks in Shandong.

The industry’s biggest producer, Changyu, also has its Zenithwirl wine range from Xinjiang under screw cap. On a recent trip organized by the company, I tried the Italian Riesling, Rose, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon in Yantai, all priced at rmb78.

Given the problems in China I have seen with corks, as well as how many consumers are unskilled with corkscrews, here’s hoping more wineries adopt alternative closures.

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