By Alain Leroux

I spent last September and October directing my first harvest in Xinjiang for Hong Liu He winery, in the outer reaches of Western China. I had a very different experience from the 12 years I have spent at Taillan winery just outside Beijing.

On one on hand, I have never started with equipment in such poor shape. We had to clean everything, clean it again, and clean it once more.

On the other hand, we had good grapes: no disease, a deep color for the reds, and sugar so high I thought I must be dreaming. Some of the red grapes had 270 grams of sugar, something I might find in Chateauneuf-de-Pape. Along with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cot, an Italian Riesling, we also had the Georgian grape Saperavi. This grape is a deep color and has high acidity, so high that it is appropriate if you think you can age the wine. We think we can.

As for the white grapes, the Riesling had less sugar, so I wanted to vinify it at 10 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the necessary cooling system, so we did it at 16 degrees Celsius, which means it will be less fruity than possible. We also had a grape from Russia called Rkatsiteli.

Overall, the quality of the grapes means these wines will be on a high level compared to others in China.

Making wine in Xinjiang is not easy for those who come from abroad. I spent two months in a village of one thousand people, who did their best to give me a good time. They were very nice, the food was good (lamb, lamb, and lamb), and I eventually got an Internet connection. Overall I found it a good experience and I look forward to people trying these wines.

More posts by Alain Leroux

– 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

– 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.

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

“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.”