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After years of producing millions of bottles of cheap plonk for supermarket shelves, Chinese wine producers are invading the high end-no doubt noticing that increasingly affluent and sophisticated Chinese wine drinkers are turning to French wines. In fact, the Dynasty scroll claims that ‘this Merlot wine can compare with French Lafite class,’ even though the predominant grape of Château Lafite Rothschild is Cabernet Sauvignon, not Merlot.

Statistics on Chinese wine production are as famously murky as the origin of the liquid that goes into the bottles. But it’s widely agreed that, although hardly a drop of Chinese wine gets exported beyond Hong Kong and Macau, China is about to become one of the world’s top 10 wine producers. The London-based International Wine & Spirit Research, which does world-wide market studies on the consumption of alcohol, says China is now the fastest-growing wine market in the world, with consumption of more than one billion bottles forecast for next year. The country already boasts more than 400 wineries, although the Big Three of Dynasty, Great Wall and Changyu account for the vast bulk of the production.

‘It’s the Wild East of winemaking, where there are no rules,’ says Lisa Perrotti-Brown, an American who lives in Singapore and gives seminars on Asian wine markets. ‘In China you can take anything and import it from anywhere and call it Chinese wine,’ she adds.

Several expensive Western restaurants and hotels in Shanghai feature a single Chinese-made wine, by Grace Vineyard. With their wet and humid summers, most areas of China aren’t suitable for grape growing, says Judy Leissner, Grace’s president and a Hong Kong Chinese married to a German investment banker. Grace’s four vineyards are in provinces to the west of Beijing, where the company has found conditions ideal for high-quality vineyards. (Like Dynasty, Grace has managed to grow Merlot and sells it at Grace’s retail store in Shanghai, for $28.)

I visited the office of Dynasty’s Mr. He to ask about its products. Dynasty is majority-owned by the government of the city of Tianjin, with a minority stake held by Rémy Martin, the French producer of Cognacs. What about the absence of a vintage date on the $586 Merlot bottle? Mr. He says the wine is from 2003, but that Dynasty omits the vintage to save the cost of printing new labels each year. But soon, he promises, ‘with the maturity of the Chinese market, we’ll have the vintages, the grapes and the winemaking techniques on the label.’

‘We’re in a period of transition,’ the Dynasty executive said in the interview. That transition will include Dynasty’s popular ’1992 dry red wine’ where, according to Mr. He, the 1992 is a brand name rather than a vintage. ‘We’re getting rid of this,’ he declares. ‘We’ll call it 92.’

It’s unlikely that any of these bottles will pop up in an American wine store. But David Henderson, who ran a wine importing business in China before returning to the U.S., has a vineyard and winery in China that produces a wine called Dragon’s Hollow solely for sale in the U.S. ‘Nobody walks into a [U.S.] wine shop and asks, ‘Where is the Chinese section?’ ‘ he says. ‘But there are 44,000 licensed Chinese restaurants in America. The potential is huge.’

令人头晕目眩的中国葡萄酒

打开仿麂皮绒的酒盒，里面还有一软木制盒，盒中放有一个烫金黑丝袋。一边那张卷起的有董事会主席签署的证书上，用中英文向你宣告，你刚花了586美元买了一个“奇迹”。

这一番隆重的仪式过后，丝袋内的那瓶酒可能并非你想象中的那么令人兴奋。酒瓶上的标签只说明这是王朝葡萄酒有限公司酿制的梅鹿辄酒（Merlot），王朝是中国三大葡萄酒巨头之一。酒标上没有葡萄园和其地理位置的信息，也没有葡萄采摘的日期。当记者问到其定价时，该公司的华东区总经理贺汝军说：“培育梅鹿辄葡萄在中国非常之难。王朝花了20年才成功地培育出这个品种。而且，这款酒式我们董事长亲自开发的，属于限量供应。”

中国的葡萄酒生产商在酿制了不计其数的供超市出售的低价劣质酒后，正在向高端市场挺进，这无疑是由于他们看到了越来越富裕的和精明的中国葡萄酒消费者青睐法国葡萄酒。而事实上，王朝的证书正是如此声称的：“此梅鹿辄葡萄酒可与法国拉菲（Lafite）等级媲美”，但事实上拉菲酒庄所用的葡萄主要是赤霞珠（Cabernet Sauvignon）而不是梅鹿辄（Merlot）。

人所共知，中国葡萄酒产量的统计数字和其瓶内装的酒的来源，都是令人捉摸不透的。但普遍的看法是，尽管中国葡萄酒的出口地从未远于香港和澳门，而中国却马上就要进入世界10大葡萄酒生产国的行列。总部设在伦敦的研究全世界酒类消费市场的国际葡萄酒及烈酒研究所（International Wine & Spirit Research）表示，中国目前是世界上发展最快的葡萄酒市场，预计明年会有10亿瓶以上的消费量。中国已有400多个酒厂，尽管三巨头王朝、长城和张裕占了其中绝大部分的产量。

生活在新加坡的美国人丽莎•佩罗蒂-布朗（Lisa Perrotti-Brown）说，中国是葡萄酒业待开垦的新兴之地，这里无任何规则可言。你可以随便从任何地方进口到中国任何东西，然后就可称之为中国酒。她经常在研讨会上讲亚洲葡萄酒市场。

上海几家昂贵的西餐厅和酒店只供应一种中国产葡萄酒，那就是怡园酒庄产的酒。怡园酒庄总裁陈芳（Judy Leissner）说，中国潮湿多雨的夏季使得大部分地区不适合种植葡萄。她是香港华人，嫁给了一位德国投资银行家。怡园的四个葡萄园都在北京以西的省份，在那些地区他们发现了适合种植高质量葡萄的理想条件。 （与王朝一样，怡园设法培育出了梅鹿辄（Merlot）这样的品种，并在上海的怡园专卖店里以28美元的零售价出售。）

这些酒是不太可能在美国的葡萄酒专卖店里出现的。但是美国人大卫•亨德森（David Henderson）说，他回美国前曾在中国做过葡萄酒进口生意，他还在中国有一家葡萄园和酒庄，酿制一种叫做龙潭（Dragon’s Hollow）的葡萄酒，仅供出口美国。他说：“没有人会走进（美国的）葡萄酒商店问‘中国酒摆在哪里？’ 但在美国有四万四千家有执照的中餐馆。中国酒在美国的销售潜力是巨大的。”

Author: Stan Sesser, Source from WSJ