I owed myself a weekend of fun for ages and cashed in Friday, Saturday and Sunday by attending five wine events. Here’s number one:

The task: to blind taste nine Chinese wines. The goal: to pick a favorite red and white. The rules: each taster received two poker chips and voted by placing them in the boxes fronting the wines they liked. Simple enough: here are the results of a tasting, held last Friday night at Sequoia Cafe, and my notes and grades (and as mentioned ad infinitum, I am not a wine expert, merely a humble consumer):

The whites

19 votes: Grace Chardonnay 2006
Granny Smith apple tartness on the nose with more apples and green plums in the light pleasant body. Someone described it as “like Chinese Semillon”. This is arguably the best value Chinese wine out there. (B+)

1 vote: Huadong Chardonnay 2002
Mild with some baked apples and honey on the nose; a creamy body. It tasted a bit too weak, too mild, too old. (B-)

1 vote: Catai Chardonnay 2004
Chemically syrupy fruitiness, almost like a cheap homemade wine smell, while the body had hints of sugar water and a slight bitterness. (D)

1 vote: Taillan 2007 (winemaker Alain Leroux brought a sample of a wine he’s only partially fermented)
The nose was medicinal with a woody varnish smell. This wine was so tart I could feel a stomachache coming on. (D)

The reds

11 votes:Catai Cabernet Sauvignon (note: one person voted six times on behalf of his table)
This had a warm nose – fresh cherries – though it smelled a bit syrupy. The body has less fruit than I expected. (C)

4 votes: Taillan Malbec 2003
This had a bit of old cut grass / straw barn smell on the nose along with some cherry (a later bottle had more fruit); easy drinking. (B-/B)

3 votes: Huadong Cabernet Sauvignon 2000
Pungent, dark red fruit on the nose and a decent mouth feel. (B-/B)

3 votes: Chateau Bolongbao Cabernet Sauvignon 2004
Dusty on the nose, with a light fruity red cherry taste, and slightly rough tannins. (C)

2 votes: Grace Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2005
Some slightly rank strawberries and other fruit and some dustiness on the nose; the body was nice enough and seemed to have a faint nuttiness. (B-/B)

While I graded the Taillan, Huadong and Grace equally, I voted for the first. Proof these wines were at least drinkable – every bottle was empty by the time the last group of a half-dozen tasters left Sequoia and that included opening two more bottles of the Malbec.

Note: Get more info on the Chinese wine scene – go to Facebook, search “China Wine” and join the group.

Getting provincial: Shandong’s Catai…

or Shanxi’s Grace?

For those who complain that Chinese wine is rotgut, here’s a chance to shelve big wineries such as Great Wall, Changyu, et al and give the work of smaller China wineries a shot. This Friday, Sequoia Cafe features a blind tasting of a red and a white from four of the more interesting outfits, including:

Huadong (Shandong), which a few years back received praise from the likes of Jancis Robinson for its Riesling.

Taillan (Hebei), a French joint venture outside Beijing run by winemaker / Sequoia Cafe regular Alain Leroux.

Grace (Shanxi), considered by many to make China’s best quality and value wines – this is served at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and has performed well in my own blind tastings.

Catai (Shandong), an Italian joint venture, which has wine ranging in taste (IMHO) from tasty to terrible.

The wines will tend to be the wineries’ entry-level offerings, thus buying a few bottles – if you like them – won’t bust your bank account.

The event is 100 kuai per person and includes the wines, the usual appetizers, and good company. If interested in attending, contact Frank Siegel at frank.siegel@gmail.com / 13701-178-073. Tell him you read about it on Beijing Boyce.

Saturday marks the first-year anniversary of Houhai area bar la Baie des Anges. Get into the birthday spirit with some cake, a quiz and quality music, plus specials on wine all night. Check out the bar’s website or call 6657-1605. Thinking it’s too hard to find? Well, there’s a handy map below

While you’re in the area you might drop into Buffalo, a bar best known for its billboards that proclaim wisdomatic tidbits such as “Shangri-La is in your mind, but your buffalo is not” (see this China Daily review).

The map to la Baie des Anges…

Get to know your Sauvignon Blanc from your Chenin Blanc and your Cabernet Sauvignon from your Cabernet Franc as wine educators Fongyee Walker and Edward Ragg lead a tutorial titled “A Variety of Varietals: I” on September 6 at the Park Plaza Hotel in conjunction with the Oxford Cambridge Club Beijing.

“In this sit-down, tutored tasting you will enjoy a selection of eight wines, refine your tasting techniques and increase your vinous knowledge followed by a buffet dinner,” states the invite. In other words, you’re going to feel a whole lot smarter by the time you’re downing those plates of pasta and sashimi.

The 250-kuai tutorial fee covers the wine, tasting sheets (in English and Chinese) and a buffet in Park Plaza’s Bloo Dining. There are only 27 seats, thus reservations are mandatory, and those cancelling less than 48 hours before the event will still be asked to pay – don’t mess with these guys! For more details or to RSVP, contact Fongyee Walker at fongyee@cantab.net.

Walker and Ragg are both former captains of the Cambridge University Varsity Wine Tasting Team, have judged wine competitions, including London’s ‘International Wine Challenge’ and the ‘Shanghai International Wine Challenge’, co-author that’s Beijing magazine’s wine column and are able to draw air into their mouths while tasting wine, thus making that very weird gurgling/sucking sound (and can teach you that, too!).

By the way, I started a Facebook group called “China Wine”- anyone interested in the topic is free to join.

There’s general consensus that the best Chinese wine, both in terms of quality and value, is from Grace Vineyard in Shanxi province. Congratuations to the winery, then, as it celebrates its tenth anniversary today. I’d hoped to attend the festivities, but as with the Shanghai International Wine and Spirits Fair, duty called—such is life. But I nevertheless look forward to enjoying more of the vineyard’s wines in the very near future.

In fact, a tasting of five Grace wines is slated for this Friday in Beijing, from 6:30 PM. For details, email me at beijingboyce@yahoo.com.

Finally, for background, here’s an interview I did with Grace CEO Judy Leissner, a report from NPR on the winery, and excerpts from a South China Morning Post article on Grace.

Grace wines, including the new “Deep Blue” (a Cabernet France, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot blend) are available from Torres.

Follow Grape Wall on Facebook and Twitter. Support the project here. And sign up for the China wine newsletter below. Also check out sibling sites Beijing Boyce and World Baijiu Day.

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Here’s a story to make a wine lover shiver:

When a friend complimented Niagara winemaker Allan Schmidt for successfully cracking the icewine market in mainland China, Schmidt dismissed it: He wasn’t selling his wine in China, he said.

But the friend persisted. He said he was sure he’d seen Schmidt’s Vineland Estates icewine for sale there.

“Again, I told him: ‘No, you must be mistaken,'” Schmidt recalls.

Then the friend gave him a link to a website.

Schmidt was stunned.

There, a Chinese company was selling a product called Vineland icewine, boasting of a joint venture with a Canadian partner and, to top it all off, using a panoramic view of Schmidt’s own winery on its Web page.

The story, reported in The Toronto Star, underscores the chilly situation in China for icewine producers. Schmidt discovered the fakes four years ago, has poured through sixty grand of legal fees, and still hasn’t gotten justice.

You would think that since icewine has a good and growing reputation in China, sales would be up. Instead, the article states, “Sales of Canadian icewine in China have plummeted 60 per cent from highs earlier in the decade.”

Exacerbating the problem, besides poor enforcement of the law against counterfeits, is that a consumer who has never tried icewine before won’t know fake from real. And many of the fakes look good, with labels featuring French and English information, maple leaves, and even photos of Niagara Falls.

Here’s a perspective from Chinese consumers, a small sample size of one, my colleague: “I went to a shopping mall [in east Beijing] and I saw ice wine. All the bottles looked the same and had the same year, but there were four or five different prices. I asked the seller what the difference is among them. She told me the cheapest ones are made from wine imported in bulk from Canada and bottled in China, the expensive one is bottled in Canada. I believed it!”

I highly doubt there was any Canadian content in any of those bottles…

In any case, the article reports a glimmer of hope: “China’s vice-director of wine quality supervision and inspection, Ma Peixua, told the Star last week that a new national standard for icewine will be implemented Jan. 1.”