We don’t get many wine fairs in Beijing, so I made a rare trip to city’s west side for the FS Wine Culture Fair—FS stands for Financial Street.
 
I arrived just after sunset on a Tuesday and found it bustling. With far more booths, people and wines than I expected.
 
I saw veteran distributors like Aussino, Beijing wineries like Purple Mist and Chateau Lion, stalls focused on German or French or [fill in a region] wine, and a mishmash of labels from around the country and world. Vendors were quite liberal with samples.

Whereas many fairs have tight themes and “curated” brands, this was far more casual, from well-known and at times pricy wines to labels I’d not seen before and that looked dubious. It kind of represented the China wine market as a whole.

(I even found local orange wines, a Marselan and a Sichuan Chardonnay, before surrendering to a friend pouring Italian and French reds.)
 
What I also saw: people buying wine. Exchanging money for bottles. We don’t see that enough these days.

Also, people enjoying wine. Asking questions and comparing wines. Drinking it many kinds of foods. I talked to strangers about which wines they liked. And to vendors, who saw I liked a given wine and then pulled out another bottle or two featuring the same region or grape. It was fun.

The wine vendors were spread among 150 or so booths that sold everything from food—sausages, stir-fries, kebabs, dumplings, burgers, marshmallows toasted via a blowtorch and more—to jewelry, mugs and other knickknacks.

In sum: a cool night; a wide range of foods and wines; an eager crowd and enthusiastic vendors. It gave me a bit more faith in the scene.

This was the last of the fair’s three nights. Kind of.

As the day wound down, the organizers polled the vendors about extending the fair for two more days. I was told over 100 agreed and the next day saw posts announcing the news. Another jolt of faith.

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