A question of taste: What do Chinese want to drink?

Everyone wants to sell wine to China, says Grape Wall of China blogger Jim Boyce. "But they spend little effort to find out what Chinese people want."

So Boyce conducts a wine tasting in Beijing every year, offering a changing panel of Chinese consumers (and a couple of cabernet-swilling journalists, including myself) a chance to blind-taste about 20 low-priced wines available in the consumer market here.

This year he took the challenge up a notch. "Lots of hotels and restaurants have been asking me to recommend a good Chinese wine for their list," he says. So this year he mustered 21 bottles - all Chinese wines made from Chinese grapes. Then he gathered his tasters in a private room at Temple Restaurant Beijing, and let the swirling, sniffing, sipping and spitting begin.