China

China has one of the largest vineyard areas in the world, but most of it grows table grapes rather than wine grapes, so the wine production figure is far smaller than the area suggests. Wine is also a small part of Chinese alcohol consumption, well behind baijiu and beer, and the market contracted sharply after 2017.

Ningxia, on the eastern edge of the Helan mountains beside the Yellow River, is the region that changed the conversation. It is high, dry and continental, with intense sunlight and enough water from the river for irrigation. Cabernet sauvignon and its relatives ripen well, and since a Ningxia wine beat Bordeaux in a 2011 blind tasting in Beijing the region has attracted serious investment, including from Moët Hennessy and Pernod Ricard.

The limiting factor is winter. Temperatures in Ningxia and Xinjiang fall low enough to kill vines, so the canes must be buried under soil each autumn and unearthed each spring, by hand or by machine. That doubles vineyard labour cost and shortens vine life. Shandong, on the coast, does not need burial but is humid and disease-prone.

Marselan, a 1961 French crossing of cabernet sauvignon and grenache that never caught on in France, has become an unofficial national grape because it handles the conditions and gives good colour and structure.