(This Q&8 first appeared in the Grape Wall Newsletter. Sign up for free here.)

Frustration with local farmers and foreign consultants. The soul-destroying cases of a vanishing US$70,000 payment and of a vineyard-dissecting road appearing. All on top of the nonstop challenges of securing land, planting vineyards, constructing a winery and sourcing equipment.

It’s been ten years since the nitty-gritty memoir A Decent Bottle of Wine in China was published, with businessman Chris Ruffle bluntly covering the first decade of winery Treaty Port in Qiushan Valley, Shandong Province, from 2004 through 2015.

In this Q&8, I asked Ruffle to reflect on those ten years, on how things changed in the decade since, and on recent projects, such as forays into whisky and his historical novel about 1980s Beijing. The full exchange is below.

Grape Wall: Some 80 pages into the memoir, you write, “I was going to use a darker chapter title, but, looking back, I see I have done that rather a lot.”

This book does indeed have many dark episodes, although lightened by humor and insights. How do you feel looking back now? Do any situations seem worse or better in the light of today?

Chris Ruffle: The craziness of the project does not really diminish with time.

Although I had worked in China for over 20 years when I started the Treaty Port project, I had been in the services industry in the big cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei. I was still hopelessly naïve when it came to wine, to manufacturing and to rural China.

These all came back to bite me.

I was determined to write a “warts and all” portrait, and I think my book captures well the challenges of doing business in China in the period 2005 to 2015. The project cost me more money and more stress than I had anticipated but I learned a lot about doing real business in China. My business in China until then had been a rather superficial finance-based experience.

I was also bought up in the country, so I got to regularly escape Shanghai for the lovely scenery and fresh air of where the vineyard is based. I produced something tangible: wine to drink and a Scottish castle to admire.

And I think I made a difference, albeit to this small corner of Shandong. When I arrived, there was one dirt road and not a light to be seen.

Now there are seven wineries in the valley. The biggest recent change, post 2013, is that local officialdom and corruption is more subdued.

Grape Wall: If you could change any three decisions you made between 2005 and 2015, what would they be?

Chris Ruffle: I would be more careful who I trusted. [See the book for The Case of the Disappearing RMB400,000.]

I would have done more of my own homework and not been so reliant on my initial advisors from Bordeaux and Provence.

I would not have been in such a rush—a common issue with China business—and taken more time to work out what varietals and methods best suited the region.

Grape Wall: Specifically in terms of growing grapes and making wine, Treaty Port faced disastrous vintages in those early years—some due to weather, some due to mismanagement, some to both.

And after the first bottling in 2010—of your 2009 wines—you didn’t harvest a single grape that year. Qiushan Valley then suffered one of its coldest winters in decades, killing thousands of vines.

Could you talk about how weather and vineyard management hampered those early vintages?

Chris Ruffle: Our vineyard is roughly at the same latitude as Sicily, so there is no doubt it is warm enough. We have good granite soil—just the other side of the mountain, on the coast, it is clay, which is a lot less suitable.

But rainfall and snowfall in the winter and spring is not reliable, so I should have paid more attention to irrigation.

And the biggest headache: the region is prone to rain in August, which has a major effect on varietal choice (thick-skinned grapes do better), growing methods (bunches need to be high off the ground) and spraying (start early, ahead of the rain, with a Bordeaux mixture).

Once the grapes are nursed though August and early September, we typically have a nice dry autumn.

In good years, we did not pick the Marselan until early November.

[In terms of grape varieties], at the moment, both white and rose wines are underappreciated in China. They suit Chinese cuisine and work well in the Penglai region.

Also, Cabernet Sauvignon is overplanted—more than 40 percent of all grapes in China. We found it difficult to get fully ripe.

Grape Wall: Your winery was the first in Qiushan Valley, but your book references new projects arising, including Long Dai (DBR Lafite), Mystic Island and Runaway Cow.

You provided some of them help, with Lafite doing its first vintage in your cellar, and later buying some of your vineyards.

Ten years on, to what degree do you interact with your neighbors? And how do you feel about the general wine scene in Qiushan Valley now?

Chris Ruffle: At first there was some tension between the producers, but I think they have mostly learned that it is best to cooperate in dealing with powerful officialdom and market development.

We have worked particularly closely with Lafite after some initial disdain—an Englishman making wine?!

We have made wine on a toll-production basis for other wineries that do not yet have the full plant in place. We have had less to do with those wineries focused on the hotel side.

I also sold the bulk of our vineyards to Lafite just before Covid. This has reduced my agricultural overhead and we have been able to use the cash to repair and upgrade the castle and facilities. I am still well-placed to buy-in as many local grapes as I require, which allows us to be more flexible in meeting changing demand.

Grape Wall: I stayed at Treaty Port in 2020 and, after a full English breakfast in the kitchen, sauntered to the road where a sign points to Runaway Cow, with its Burgundy-influenced wines, to Long Dai, with its Bordeaux pedigree, to Mystic Island, with a New World winemaker, and more, all with the mountains and fields and orchards and a nice little town surrounding me.

It feels like this might be the best place in China for casual wine tourism, given the wine quality and winery diversity, given how closely they are set together, and given the huge number of potential visitors from the massive population in Shandong province or via an airport less than 30 minutes away. What do you think of Qiushan Valley’s tourism situation?

Chris Ruffle: One of the things which appealed to me when I first saw the area is that we are within reach of major centres: 50 minutes from Beijing airport to Penglai airport and 1 hour and 5 minutes from Shanghai. We also get local visitors from Qingdao, Tianjin and Weihai.

At the moment, tourism is largely local. Local government, responding to Beijing incentives, is too focused on manufacturing. Income from services is somehow inferior. The attention given to environmental protection is only lip service; if an investor comes in with hard cash to build a cement plant, or there is a transport budget for a new motorway, it will be utilised with no consultation with local residents.

Also, I do not think that Beijing values the industry: it keeps giving away zero-tariff perks to Chile, New Zealand, Australia and so on.

Grape Wall: Treaty Port not only makes wine but is also involved in whisky, and you recently told me it sells better, especially at cask strength. Could you talk about this particular niche?

Chris Ruffle: You cannot have a Scottish Castle without whisky!

From an early stage, to sell alongside our own wine, I imported various single malts from different regions and started to educate the market.

I then found that a personal favourite, WhiskyMc—three parts whisky to one part ginger wine—went down very well with consumers. It also goes really nicely with the local crab and seafood dumplings.

So, I started to import whisky and ginger wine in bulk from Scotland and from Yorkshire, respectively, mixing and bottling it in our own cellar.

We have now graduated to importing a variety of malts in bulk, thus minimizing tax and bottling costs. We now even offer a 21-year old, which I can recommend. We have made a specialty of Islay-style whiskies—the smoky, sea-weedy taste is a favourite of mine. We also recently launched a sweeter Speyside whisky for the ladies.

We find that out customers mostly prefer a cask strength of 56% to 58% rather than the watered-down standard level of 40%. This suits the Chinese style of drinking: ganbei!

Grape Wall: Your most recent book also concerns China, but is a novel, a historical romantic thriller called The Barter Trade, set in Beijing in 1983.

The blurb is fairly spicy: “It is 1983 and we are in Beijing. China has just started to re-open to Western trade after the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. A young Englishman finds himself caught in a dilemma: will his desire for a Chinese girl make him willing to source forbidden technology for her father? And will their relationship be used to lure him into espionage?”

That blurb also underscores how much China has changed since you first set foot here. What is your overall take on China’s development the past 40 years?

Chris Ruffle: The catalyst for the boom was the discovery, after my parents passed away and I was clearing their house, of a stack of letters and photos I had sent them when I first worked in Beijing in 1983.

The contrast with modern-day Beijing is so great, that I thought it worth capturing for posterity.

I had already written one memoir, so this one I wrote as a novel. This had a benefit of allowing me to hide the names of the innocent—and the guilty.

I have had a front-row seat at what has been probably the biggest transformation of a society in peacetime—maybe only challenged by the industrial revolution in the North of England?

I think this has been to the huge benefit of the population. Of course, mistakes have been made. I have visited some horribly polluted regions of China. The rapidity of urbanization has had a wrenching effect on the population and separated families. There has been a waste of resources—driving across Shandong, I come across empty residential blocks in unsuitable locations, which will never be occupied.

Grape Wall: Finally, back to A Decent Bottle of Wine.

The last entry begins, “This is not the final chapter that I wanted to write. That chapter would end with a triumph; after overcoming so many adversities, Treaty Port Vineyards would enjoy a fine, full harvest and produce a vintage so good as to force the wine experts to revise their views on what is possible in China. A happy, local population would value the prosperity brought to this rural backwater by the project. A settled and competent local management team would be able to develop the business independently, allowing me to relax and enjoy my visits to the vineyard. The broad, sunlit upland meadows would be in sight.

“Instead, I discovered in March that the government intends to build an elevated, four lane highway through the middle of my vineyard in between the castle and the lake.”

You then conclude the chapter asking, “Would I do this all again knowing what I know now?” and answering, “Are you kidding?”

So, sitting here in 2025, would you do this all again?

Chris Ruffle: No. I wouldn’t have the energy. However, I am pleased when people enjoy the wine or my castle, and I was chuffed when recently I got a round of applause at a meeting of government and other local producers as “the pioneer of Qiushan.”

There have also been personal benefits. I am convinced that my talented youngest daughter was conceived at the farmhouse in Mulangou [in Qiushan Village], though my wife disagrees.

Note: See Treaty Port’s website—treatyport.com—for details on wine, whisky and accommodations. A Decent Bottle of Wine in China is available from online retailers, including a Kindle version on Amazon. Find more info about the novel Barter Trade here.

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