Chinese Wine?
Written By: Anonymous on Fri, Aug 15th 2008
As we sit languidly on our couches watching people perform shocking physical feats in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it can seem from our horizontal positions that we have more in common with a house cat than these superhuman-humans. But interestingly enough, there is a major wine sponsor, COFCO Wines & Spirits (China Great Wall Wine Co., LTD), for this year's Olympics. Olympians drink wine? Ok, move over house kitty we might be getting somewhere here. As I sip my Cab and meditate on how Olympian I feel, I decide to see what the deal is with Chinese wine. You KNOW the Greek Olympians were pretty tight with Bacchus, we might be coming full circle... In recent Chinese history, there have been some decidedly un-stellar enological endeavors. Hong Kong, being formerly a British colony, has had international wine tastes for quite sometime, however Mainland China has come up with some... interesting ways of enjoying wine (mixing Coca Cola with Cabernet Sauvignon and Sprite with Chardonnay are excellent examples). Even though China has been making wine for thousands of years from grapes, rice and plums, in the 1980s they embarked on the international scene by beginning to make French-style wine. At first this was almost exclusively for export, but as the Chinese economy has soared in the past decade, now 90% of the wine produced is enjoyed locally - - that is a huge shift! With China posed to be a massive new market for wine, there might be a shift in international tastes. Right now, most wines are blended to appeal to the Western palate, however with local Chinese varietals finding a market at home, we might find our future selves sitting down to a Great Wall bottle of Dragon Eye (a little fruit more akin to a lychee than a grape). There are some wines on the market right now, like the 2005 Noble Dragon Shandong Red, produced by Pioneer Wine, which is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Dragon Eye. The result is Western bent but with a Chinese twang - - however, the scales on which flavors dominate could tip in the future. Hey, with globalization marching ever forward I think a shift is entirely possible. There is a very political air to the 2008 Olympics, to put it mildly. I will not go into that here, as this is hardly the forum, however I can't help but naively voice my happiness that the Games are set in this political hotspot. The Olympics cross boundaries of race, culture and geography. They take our concerns away from politics and have us focus on the beauty and grace of us all as human beings. I find it very exciting that China is posed to be a new and powerful influence on the international wine market. In the spirit of the global coming-together that the Olympics represents, I look forward to the fascinating changes in the coming years China's local varietals will offer. I'll probably never give up my Cab, but stowing a bottle of Dragon Eye next to it wouldn't hurt either, and heck, the name's just cool.
