Uncorking Potential

An international winemaking contest taps Ningxia's bottled-up possibilities. Zhang Zefeng reports.

South African winemaker Justin Corrans embarked on a journey into the unknown to practice his craft in September 2015. He flew over half of the hemisphere to take part in a two-year winemaking challenge in a country he knew nothing about. His destination was the Helan Mountains' eastern foothills in Northwest China's Ningxia Hui autonomous region, which hosts some of the country's best-known wineries.

"I was very much overwhelmed by the size of the wine industries and the quality of the wines," Corrans recalls.