Urban wine style in China – dialog and adventurous journey at once

Most wine drinkers are living in large cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, but the wine wave is already spreading over ”smaller” cities with a population below 5 million. With comic undertones, a “wine culture” is even slowly spreading over the small “towns” with just under one million inhabitants.

“The Chinese have seen a TV commercial about wine and now they wait at my bar and want to buy the wine,” says Thomas Julien, a Hong Kong wine merchant. Imported wines with strong custom duties, however, are beyond the reach of the average consumer. Therefore, far more than 90 percent of the 1.2 billion Chinese drink wines from the domestic dealer Torres or from local producers like Great Wall or Dynasty, for example.

The Chinese drink wines consisting of a creative mixture of wines from different regions of China and cheaply imported wines from abroad. Anyone who asks for the vintage is told that there is no vintage on the label – why anyway, who cares? It is quite different with the affluent consumers - they are brand conscious and eager to learn more about wines. In large numbers, they attend tastings, which are increasingly offered, meet in trendy wine bars or take part in private tastings which can be characterized as a training course.

For winemakers from traditional wine-growing nations it is hard to imagine and a nightmare at the same time what the Chinese actually like. “There is no concrete definition for the Asian palate. It is a dialogue, an adventurous journey, it is a term that is not yet defined,” said Jeannie Cho Lee, a Hong Kong-based wine critic and author.

“The popular wines are light, not too rich in alcohol, not sour, without heavy tannins,” encapsulates the Chinese winemaker Emma Gao Yuan, who studied enology at the prestigious University of Bordeaux. “But better-educated Chinese people appreciate good wine and even have the same taste as the French or the Americans,” explains Emma, and points out: “It is a question of education. It is like with my French husband - if I give him a really high quality tea to drink, he cannot appreciate it.”

“What is the definition of a Grand Vin?” asks Michel Rolland, a recognized international wine consultant, in a discussion with Chinese journalists. “It is our own definition, which we have created in the West. And what does our definition mean to the Chinese? Why should our taste in the western part be the universal one? This is a little arrogant.”

“My fellow countrymen take the most important image of wine from movies or from advertising,” says Emma Gao Yuan. Enjoying a bottle of wine with a nice girl, a romance, a comedy, a love story - all of this symbolizes luxury, and above all, it is a really good way to begin an evening - this is the message.” (aw.yoopress / translator e.meissner)