China

To say that the wine world was shocked in 2011 when a Chinese wine won the prestigious Decanter World Wine Awards best Bordeaux varietal is an understatement. The wine from the He Lan Qing Xue Winery located in Ningxia Province in north-central China is a red blended wine using grape varieties associated with the Bordeaux region of France. For many this astonishing success came from out of the blue. For others more in the know it merely confirmed the fact that the investment made in the Chinese wine industry over the last three decades has begun to pay off.


Archaeologists point to an area around the borders of what is now Georgia and Iran about 7,000 BC as the place where humans first cultivated grape bearing vines. As with many other inventions from gunpowder to printing, it is the Chinese that probably discovered the process of alcoholic fermentation. For most of China’s history it has been rice that provided the raw material for making a fermented alcoholic drink. It was only towards the later part of the 20th Century that the Chinese began to turn their attentions in earnest to both drinking and making wines from grapes. The economic explosion and a rapidly rising middle class with disposable incomes have driven a dramatic increase in wine consumption in China.

Chinese consumers initially turned to the wines of Europe and in particular France to supply their demands. The provenance and label of a wine are extremely important to the Chinese consumer and even more some say than the quality of the contents of the bottle. It is no coincidence that it is China that buys an increasing amount of what are termed Bordeaux first growth and Burgundy Gran Cru’s, which are some of the most expensive wines in the world often in excess of $1,000 a bottle. It is also to France that China turned to import the necessary expertise to develop its own wine industry.

Rémy Martin the famous French Cognac label was the first foreign company to establish a joint wine making venture in China in 1980. Dynasty Wine Limited imported from France everything from the vines themselves to all the paraphernalia needed for making wine including expensive oak barrels and expert personnel. Since the initial foreign investment Chinese wine production has boomed and today China is the 7th largest wine producing country in the world set to increase even further over the next few years. Most of China’s wine production well over 90 per cent is consumed in China so do not expect to see Chinese wine on the Kenyan supermarket shelves anytime soon. Nevertheless, I predict that it will not be so long before Kenyans are buying wines from China as opposed to South Africa, France and other countries.

Food and wine pairing can be a confusing and even a contentious subject. Although I tend to be sceptical at over elaboration when it comes to choosing what wines go best with specific cuisines, I do accept that matching wine with Chinese dishes is particularly challenging. Part of the problem relates to complex sauces and strong spices associated with some Chinese dishes. Few wines for example can compliment satisfactorily a Chinese dish containing plenty of spicy Sichuan pepper. The other problem is that Chinese food is usually served all together and selecting a single wine that will compliment an array of different tastes is difficult.

In general what seem to work best to accompany many Chinese dishes are lighter bodied wines and in particular white wines. Perhaps best of all is to choose white wines made from the so called aromatic grape varieties. I am thinking in particular of zingy Sauvignon Blancs from South Africa of which there are many good examples available in Kenya. Even better although a little more difficult to find in Kenya are wines made from the famous German grape variety Riesling. I recently discovered a really good Rieflé Bonheur Convivial Alsace Riesling available from a new wine shop Le Decanter situated at the ABC shopping mall in Nairobi. In the same vain I would recommend searching out wines made from the difficult to pronounce Gewürztraminer grape and there is a South African one from the company Simonsig available in some supermarkets in Kenya.

Another white aromatic grape variety Viognier seems to work well with many Chinese foods. There is a particularly good wine based on the Viognier grape called Goats do Roam, which is available in all good Kenyan supermarkets at a relatively reasonable price. If you are a red wine enthusiast then I would suggest wines made from grape varieties with lower tannins that mouth puckering chemical that is also present in a cup of tea. Better to go with lighter bodied wines based on grapes such as Merlot and Gamay the grape associated with the fruity light wines of the Beaujolais region in France. Last but not least why not try a fruity and chilled Rosé wine, which can work very well with a variety of Chinese dishes.