Wineries: new fruitful industry

QINHUANGDAO, Hebei - It was a blissful weekend for a young woman fed up with the hustle and bustle of the big city and it was spent wandering through a vineyard, sampling goblets of fine red wine and indulging in what is being promoted as a wine spa.

But Yang Xiaofei, 24, was not in Napa Valley, California, or any other well-known Western winery: She was in Qinhuangdao, a coastal city in North China's Hebei province, now known as the "Oriental Bordeaux" because it shares the same latitude as the famous French wine-growing region.

Qinhuangdao, along with all wineries across China, are gearing up to put China's name on the world wine map.

Berry Bros & Rudd's Future of Wine Report, published by Britain's oldest wine dealer, estimated that China's current 400 or so wineries would increase more than tenfold in the next 50 years, with a quarter of them producing fine-quality wine.

The report also predicted that China would leap from being the world's sixth largest wine producer by volume to the leading producer by 2058.

Now, more and more Chinese wineries are adopting the "chateau wine" concept, employing elaborate grape-growing and careful wine-making techniques to produce ever better wines, rather than resorting to mass production, in order to appeal to increasingly affluent and sophisticated Chinese wine drinkers.

Wineries tend to make their operations visitor-friendly by providing tours of the vineyards and wine cellars and even offering conference facilities and overnight accommodation.

One of the most unique wineries is Bodega Langes in Qinhuangdao, where Yang spent a whole weekend.

Remarkably, Strauss waltzes are played to the grapes in the 200-hectare vineyard and the wines stored in the oak barrels in the cellars. Ren Jing, managing director of Bodega Langes, said "Our grapes and wines listen to music because both grapes and wines are alive and we want them to be influenced by Austrian culture."

The winery holds an annual harvest festival in late September or early October during which visitors can crush grapes with their feet and help make their own wines.

Chateau Bolongbao, in Southwest Beijing, distinguishes itself from other wineries with its claim to be the first all-organic vineyard in China to make wine from grapes grown without the use of chemical pesticides or other artificial substances.

Since 2006, people have been able to order Bolongbao red wine in a number of restaurants in Paris, France, indicating that its high-quality can compare favorably with famed French wines even in the heart of French culture.

"China, as the world's fastest-growing economy, has huge market potential in the wine industry and it will become the world's most important wine producer as well as consumer in the near future," said Yves Bnard, the president of the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV) at the 11th China Qinhuangdao International Wine Festival last month.

From 2006 to 2009, the surface area of Chinese vineyards increased by 6.1 percent, and grape production increased by 10.7 percent, according to the OIV.

In 2009, China's wine production amounted to 960,000 tons, an increase of 27.63 percent from the previous year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

Sales of wine on the Chinese mainland amounted to 44 billion yuan last year, up 12 percent from a year earlier, according to research by global management consultants AT Kearney.

Liang Guoxing, chairman of Silver Base Group, the largest distributor of the famous Chinese liquor brand Wuliangye, said: "The wine market in China is very promising. The group plans to launch 100 outlets this year called 'Wine Kingdom' to offer wines in 20 cities across the country, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou."

Per Jenster, a professor at China Europe International Business School, said: "The popularity of wine is explained in its healthcare functions as well as the symbolic associations of the red color with happiness and celebration in Chinese society. The recent evolution of the Chinese wine industry is likely to surprise many international observers."