Grapes worth their weight in gold

California is pulling in the Chinese - and it's not because of Disneyland

More than 160 years after the gold rush that drew the Chinese to California by the thousands, a modern generation of Chinese fortune hunters is descending on the Golden State. Happily, the vineyards of California are showing not the slightest resistance in yielding up their liquid treasure, and cheerful Chinese are returning home bottles in hand and with far more to talk about than Hollywood, the Golden Gate Bridge and a personal encounter with Mickey Mouse.

California is the world's fourth largest wine producer, and Chinese constitute the world's fourth-largest red-wine-drinking population, so perhaps those numbers dictated that this wonderfully convivial relationship between winemaker and drinker was destined to happen.

Wente Family Estates, Livermore Valley, basks in spring sunshine. The vineyards are on sloping hillsides, on ancient stony riverbeds, along fertile valley floors and at the base of steep sandstone cliffs. The microclimate of each of these locations is well suited to specific grape varieties. Provided to China Daily

A wine tasting event in the cellar of Dry Creek Vineyard in Sonoma county. Dong Fangyu / China Daily

Dining on the patio of the Restaurant at Wente Vineyards. The restaurant uses produce from the winery's organic garden. Provided to China Daily

Stainless steel tanks for fermentation and aging at Concannon Vineyard in Livermore Valley. Dong Fangyu / China Daily

Forget the idea of the Chinese who are clueless about wine and care even less about what it is and where it comes from. Many Chinese who have fallen for the charms of the finest reds and the finest whites now want answers to these questions, and California's wine makers have shown that they are ready to step up to the plate and provide Chinese wine aficionados a home run full of answers.

Robert Mondavi, a winery in world famous Napa Valley, 80 kilometers north of San Francisco, now hosts tours led by a Mandarin-speaking guide twice a week. With prior arrangement, other kinds of tastings with commentary in Mandarin are also offered.

"We were getting more than 50 Chinese coming here a day at the busiest times, from May to October," says Gong Fangfang, from Chengdu, Sichuan province, who worked as a wine educator for Robert Mondavi Winery for 18 months until recently.

Mondavi took her on as a guide after she completed a course in wine at the Culinary Institute of America in Napa Valley.

"Even in the low season you get at least 10 Chinese visitors coming in here every day," she says.

The winery has offered the Chinese-language tours and tastings since 2013, and the number of Chinese visitors has gradually increased, she says.

A family-friendly walking tour with a tasting of two wines on the Mondavi estate costs about $20 a person. A walk through vineyards and cellars, and a sit-down guided tasting costs $35. A wide variety of tours that include tastings of food and wine and inspections of wine-making workshops is available.

The winery's website, robertmondaviwinery.com, has details of tastings, tours and other events, including details of whether a booking is required, Gong says.

"At one stage so many were popping in unannounced that we just could not cope with the numbers."

International visitors

California's wine country is home to about 4,100 wineries that make about 90 percent of all US wines. Overall, more than 21 million tourists - that equates to the population of Beijing - visit Californian wine regions each year, according to the Californian Wine Institute, the largest wine advocacy organization in California, which represents more than 1,000 wineries throughout the state.

Napa has become so popular that many Chinese know of Napa Valley before knowing anything about American wines. A report of Visit Napa Valley, the official marketing bureau of Napa County, says that last year the area received 60,928 visitors from China, accounting for 13.6 percent of visitors out of the US, second only to those from Canada, at 24.6 percent.

Overall, 448,800 international visitors called in on Napa Valley, 88 percent more than in 2012.

Misunderstanding

Christopher Beros, director of the China office of the California Wine Institute, says one big misunderstanding among Chinese is that Napa wines represent the sum total of California's wine production. In fact, as prestigious as Napa wines are, they are a mere drop in the bucket, accounting for just 4 percent of the state's total production.

Beros advises Chinese against locking themselves into one area in their wine adventures in the state.

"Wine tasting in California is more about exploring, trying many different things with totally different environments."

More than 100 wine regions officially recognized as American Viticultural Areas are spread over 1,000 kilometers from northern to southern California, with vineyards on hillsides, in valleys, near the coast, rivers and lakes, and wineries of many different styles, and diverse landscapes and climates.

However, you do not have to travel far for a change of scenery, one prime example of that being Sonoma Valley, just 20 minutes' drive from Napa, a wine region with very different characteristics.

Wang Yu, 31, who works in an investment bank in Beijing, says he went to Sonoma in July and found it cheaper than its more famous neighbor.

"The thing about Sonoma is that there I felt I had a much wider choice of varietals to taste than in Napa.

"The other thing is that it has a more rustic feel than Napa, where things are more boutique, commercial, and sophisticated. But they are both great. Visiting a vineyard is in itself a very romantic and a wonderful thing."

Wang is passionate about food and wine and says learning about wine has become after-hours entertainment in which he can make new friends.

If it was new friends that the US government was aiming to make 12 months ago when it introduced 10-year multiple entry visas for Chinese, it looks to have succeeded magnificently, and that will no doubt mean the numbers heading for the wineries of California will continue to increase over the coming months and years.

"Nearly everyone in my office has applied or is applying for a US tourist visa," Wang says.

Michael Parr, vice president for international sales of Wente Family Estates, about 70 kilometers east of San Francisco, says its tasting room staff have recently undergone special "Chinese cultural training to better understand and serve Chinese visitors".

Wente Vineyards, nestled in Livermore Valley, claims to be the oldest continuously family-operated vineyards in the US, going back to 1883, when a German immigrant, C. H. Wente, sailed to US in pursuit of a better life.

Wine and shopping

Livermore Valley receives 6 million visitors a year, 60 percent of them Asian, and most of those are Chinese, Parr says. The bulk of those visitors make a beeline for the newest and largest high-end brand retail outlet mall in California, San Francisco Premium Outlets.

Wente Vineyards and the other 60 wineries in Livermore work closely with Premium Outlets to draw mall visitors to winery tours, tastings, fine dining and golf.

In doing so, the aim is not to pull in Chinese tourists by the bus load, Parr says.

"We want quality visitors who want to spend their time appreciating our wine and embrace our lifestyle."

As part of Wente's tourism programs, he says, the winery is developing partnerships with distributors through which visitors can have their wines dispatched to China to save them the hassle of lugging them around as they head home.

Wente Vineyards has also tuned its marketing to the catering market. It hosts more than 200 weddings a year, and a "significant number" of those are for ethnic Chinese, Parr says.

"Many of them live in the San Francisco area and choose Wente Vineyards to celebrate their weddings based on its beauty, prestige and convenient proximity to San Francisco."

The winery has a catering department that can incorporate spectacular wedding settings including grapevines, beautiful foothills and views of its golf course.

For every one of the past 22 years the winery's dining outlet, Wente Restaurant, has been awarded Best of Award for Excellence by the magazine Wine Spectator. This award is given to restaurants worldwide that excel in wine and food presentation.

"We are known as America's lifestyle winery," Parr says. "Great wines, food, sports, nature, concerts... And this is going to be an important marketing factor to China. Just think about what wealthy Chinese want. They want leisure and lifestyle."

Magic amalgam

Lu Jiang, a Beijing wine critic and consultant, has made wine-themed trips to California three times. For him the most notable feature of these expeditions is that they are about far more than wines and wineries. The tours are a magic amalgam that bring together local wineries and local resources such as food, scenery, other places of interest, hotels, music, arts, films and sports, he says.

"There are simply so many choices in California. The region I love most is Santa Barbara. For me it even outperforms Napa, which I like too. It was in Santa Barbara that my favorite film, the Oscar-winning Sideways, was shot. There's the amazing Danish Village of Solvang," too.

There is also a guided road trip that marks the wineries and restaurants shown in the film, he says.

Lu has traveled to several wine-growing countries, in both the New World and Old World, over the past 10 years. The Old World wine tours are obviously more steeped in history and vaunt terroir, the heritage of the soil, while the New World tours are more commercialized and versatile, with wine-related events such as festivals and concerts, he says.

"But wineries in the New World and the Old World are learning from each other."

In California, one grape varietal that epitomizes the lifestyle is Zinfandel. It is planted in 45 of the state's 58 counties, with a few key wine-growing areas including Lake, Lodi, Napa Valley, Sierra Foothills, Sonoma County and Southern California, the California Wine Institute says.

Zinfandel comes in many different styles - red, ros��, sweet, dry, late-harvest and sparkling - and it is said to go well with many Chinese dishes.

"The conventional wisdom is to have hot spicy food with a spicy light white wine," Beros of the wine institute says. "But my experience in China is that hotpot goes really well with Zinfandel."

Beros, who worked in the wine business in China for seven years before taking up his post as China director of the institute, says: "Chinese consumers really like Zinfandels. It goes great with high-acid food, full-flavored food. ... You need a sweet wine or a very fruity powerful red wine to go with hotpot."

Lu Jiang, the Chinese wine critic, says: "Zinfandel is relatively full-bodied, with a little higher alcohol level. It is fruity, with more spices, even with a jammy feel. These attributes can make Zinfandel appealing to Chinese people."

It is also relatively inexpensive, he says, many are available at between 100 yuan ($14) and 200 yuan a bottle in China.

We have the wine, and now for the industry side dishes

It is hard to credit that just 20 years ago, China barely had a wine that anyone with a knowledge of these things would hold their nose to, let alone drink. Now the country is not only producing wines that gain rave reviews from wine critics but is beginning to think seriously about how to develop a new element in the industry: wine tourism.

Lu Jiang, a Beijing wine critic and consultant, says wine tourism in Chinese wine-growing regions is still in its very rudimentary stages. Changyu, a leading Chinese wine producer, has the Chateau Changyu Afip Global in Miyun county, about 80 kilometers from the center of Beijing, but Lu sees this more as a resort village than a winery estate in the strictest sense.

"But more and more wineries, such as like Grace Vineyard in Shanxi province, are becoming aware of the importance of developing wine tourism and are starting to do something."

Many Chinese wine lovers are pinning their hopes on Ningxia Hui autonomous region, in the country's northwest. The New York Times this month devoted lavish space to an article about how China's winemakers are looking to create their own version of Napa Valley - a location that would draw in wine tourists by the tens of thousands - and how the government is supporting such plans.

Jim Boyce, a Canadian who lives in Beijing, and who has had a wine blog, Grape Wall of China, for about 10 years, has visited Ningxia since 2009 and has consulted with the Ningxia government on projects such as Ningxia Winemakers Challenge.

Ningxia's main asset is that it is the only place in China that has a lot of wineries very close together that make good wine, Boyce says.

"Shandong and Hebei have a lot of wineries, but I don't think they have the quality and consistency of Ningxia. It also has some interesting history, fantastic food that is very hearty, with lots of vegetables and a lot of lamb. I think it's just a fun place to be. They've got Yinchuan city as well."

The key thing now is to develop infrastructure, he says, including ways of getting tourists from Yinchuan out into the wineries.

"That's very difficult right now because there isn't much infrastructure in terms of transport, and there are not that many wine tasting rooms for visitors."

Boyce says he often gets people e-mailing or calling him from Yinchuan, saying, "Hey, I am here. How do I get to the winery?"

"Usually I have to call the winemaker, the winery owner, to see if it's OK and they have to find some transport."

By contrast, it is simple to get around the wineries of California, especially in Napa, he says.

"In terms of California winery tours, one of the benefits is you are so close to San Francisco, which is a great cultural city. That makes going to Napa, Sonoma, Lodi and other regions just much more attractive because you can send a few days at San Francisco as well."

Bob Miao, a former director of Michelin Guide China Maps and Traveling, says: "It couldn't be better for developing wine tourism if a wine region is near a metropolis, such as Napa Valley and San Francisco, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, Champagne and Paris, Yarra Valley and Melbourne. Otherwise it has to develop into a whole famous city like Bordeaux."

More and more Chinese tourists in Paris are taking time to travel to the Champagne region, just an hour away, he says.

Lu Jiang, a Beijing wine critic and consultant, says the prospects of Huailai Valley, 70 kilometers northwest of Beijing, are good for developing wine tourism.

Huailai is also a resort for its natural hot spring water, he says.

dongfangyu@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 11/21/2015 page18)