Despite a flailing economy and lackluster demand in the domestic wine market, China’s top producers have maintained their unwavering commitment to producing world-class wines, and it shows in this Top 100 Wines of China list. While statistics show that the country’s wine consumption, production and imports have all declined in consecutive years from 2017 to 2022, the quality of Chinese wines, we believe, has been steadily improving.
In the wake of China’s wine market shakeup, a significant reshuffling of wineries is on the horizon. While the outlook for sales appears gloomy, we remain optimistic, viewing this transformation as a much-needed recalibration – more of a long-term blessing rather than a curse. The aftermath of this upheaval might lead to a more streamlined wine industry with fewer opportunistic investors who prioritize quick profits over quality.
This list, derived from a comprehensive tasting of more than 470 Chinese wines, serves as a testament to our recognition of the leading producers in the country, who have gradually established their reputations through their commitment to quality. But we are also witnessing the emergence of passionate young winemakers and newcomers who are eager to create exceptional wines and carve out their own identities in the market.
This year, for the first time, our Chinese Wine of the Year is a white wine, the extraordinary Xiao Ling Chardonnay Shangri-La Hong Po 霄岭红坡霞多丽 2021.
It’s the most impressive white wine from China that I have ever tasted – a chardonnay masterpiece showing unparalleled depth of flavors, tantalizing acidity and fine minerality with salinity and texture.
The wine is made from a small, southerly exposed, extremely high-altitude plot in the village of Hong Po in China’s coveted Shangri-La region. Winemaker Feng Jian called making the wine a “daring endeavor” to fully understand the 2,650-meter-altitude vineyard’s terroir.
He said they foot-treaded the grapes before they underwent a brief period of skin contact overnight, followed by a 36-hour must oxidation process and fining – a less conventional method compared with that used for their Xiao Ling Chardonnay Shangri-La 霄岭霞多丽 2021 (No. 14), which Feng said took a less interventional Burgundian approach.
Feng said Hong Po’s fruit was more textured yet ethereal, which led them to the decision to pursue a less conventional method when making the wine. It underwent fermentation and aging in a blend of one puncheon and two new Burgundy barrels, with malolactic fermentation applied to one-third of the wine. In the tasting aspect, the wine begins with a creamy and flinty character, while the oak influence imparts a refined essence of roasted white sesame. Lime, salt, and mineral flavors intertwine with remarkable tension and a sharpened but mineral-textured acidity. The result is a full-bodied, flinty, and saline chardonnay that culminates in a long, creamy and mouthwatering finish.
The only drawback with the Hong Po 2021 is that just 930 bottles were made, from the small vineyard of just over a hectare. But the retail price of this exceptional wine is approximately $150, which is less than half the price of our No. 2 Chinese wine, the Ao Yun Shangri-La 敖云云南香格里拉 2019.
I tasted the 2019 Ao Yun on two separate occasions this year, each time with Maxence Dulou, the estate manager and chief winemaker. The first tasting was at our Hong Kong office, while the second occurred in a discreet setting where the wine was blindly evaluated alongside three renowned names from the same vintage: Chateau Lafite, Opus One and Sassicaia. The wine showed extremely well, with its depth and refined combination of high-altitude richness and freshness giving away its identity.
The 2019 Ao Yun may very well be the most extraordinary, complex and layered version of the wine to date. It came from a dry vintage and their smallest crop ever – about 800 grams per plant for cabernet sauvignon, according to Dulou, which is just one-third the average yield of a Medoc grand cru classe.
It was their most extended and latest harvest, spanning a lengthy harvest window of 72 days, from Sept. 9 to Nov. 21. This allowed for the meticulous selection of grapes from their mosaic of 314 vineyard plots scattered across four villages, including Sinong, Shuori, Xidang and Adong. Their two single-village “Cru” reds we tasted this year showed extremely well, too, including the Moet Hennessy Shangri-La Xidang Cru 酩悦轩尼诗香格里拉西当 Cru 2019 (No. 15) and Moet Hennessy Shangri-La Adong Cru 酩悦轩尼诗香格里拉阿东Cru 2019 (No. 27).
As opposed to Ao Yun’s pursuit of freshness, finesse and elegance in the heights of Shangri-La, producers in China’s modern wine hub of Ningxia tend toward crafting rich, concentrated reds in a more opulent style – and the region’s 2021 vintage shows even higher alcohol levels because of the warm and dry conditions of that year.
For some Ningxia winemakers, finding their own level of elegance is a matter of viticultural prowess. Grace vineyard winemaker Yean Yean Lee, a Malaysian who trained in Australia, retains more bunches to achieve higher yield of about six tons per hectare. This approach serves to extend the growing season and ensures that the harvest can occur later without resulting in overly ripe, concentrated and jammy fruit.
LOCKING IN VALUE
Grace Vineyard’s higher yields also enable them to offer great value across their selections from Ningxia and the usually cooler and much rainier Shanxi, where wines tend to be higher in natural acidity and more fluid and less concentrated in form. This year’s list features three wines from Grace Vineyard, including their premium Grace Vineyard Syrah Cabernet Sauvignon Ningxia Interval 怡园酒庄留白干红葡萄酒 2021 (No. 11), as well as their exceptional marselan from Shanxi, the Grace Vineyard Marselan Shanxi Tasya’s Reserve 怡园酒庄德熙珍藏马瑟兰干红葡萄酒 2021 (No. 17), which comes at a remarkable price of about $35 – one of the best deals on the list.
Their flagship cabernet blend from Shanxi, the Grace Vineyard Shanxi Chairman’s Reserve 怡园庄主珍藏葡萄酒 2019, secured the No. 4 spot in the top 10. The excellent 2019 vintage, characterized by the unusually dry and warm conditions in Shanxi’s rainy Taigu plateau, produced a Chairman’s Reserve that exhibits remarkable similarities to a refined Bordeaux, boasting an excellent intensity of cassis and pencil shaving character. With a seamless, long and classy profile, it’s the most impressive Chairman’s Reserve I’ve ever had.
Four other wines from Ningxia placed among our Top 10. The Domaine Charme Cabernet Sauvignon Ningxia Reserve 夏木庄园甄藏赤霞珠 2021 came in at No. 5, offering one of the best and more affordable cabernet sauvignons from the vintage. While Domaine Charme is known for its textured and bright viogniers, their concentrated and structured red wines are becoming increasingly refined in the hands of winemaker Deng Zhongxiang. Deng told me that the team started the harvest early for their reds during the dry and warm vintage, in the third week of September. He has also been dialing back from extraction with better temperature control to keep the fermentation going a little longer.
Deng, who also consults for seven other wineries or projects in Ningxia, helped in the making our eighth-ranked wine, the Chateau Rong Yuan Mei Syrah Ningxia Grand Reserve 容园美酒庄特级珍藏西拉 2021, which is always a floral and more refined, silky expression of syrah from Ningxia’s Qingtingxia area, around 100 kilometers south of Ningxia’s capital, Yinchuan.
“We don’t need more wines with richness here in Ningxia, we need more wines with real character and uniqueness,” said Deng, who, like many winemakers we talked to, believes one of the problems for the region is the homogeneity of style. His winemaking prowess and insight into Ningxia’s terroirs are further exemplified through wines he crafted for two other wineries – the Ruo Shan Cabernet Sauvignon Ningxia Grand Reserve 若山珍藏版 2021 (No. 25) and United Winery Syrah Ningxia Beyond Time Monopole 联合农科时光机单一园西拉 2021 (No. 67).
Speaking of uniqueness, a Ningxia malbec made a notable impact amid the top 10. The Helan Qingxue Vineyard Malbec Ningxia Jiabeilan Baby Feet 贺兰晴雪加贝兰小脚丫马尔贝克 2019 claimed the No. 6 spot. It’s a neat, fresh and polished malbec that epitomizes the tremendous potential of this grape variety in Ningxia.
Another wine that came out of the foothills of the magnificent Helan Mountains, which rise above the Yinchuan plains starting at an elevation of 1,100 meters above sea level before reaching a peak of over 3,500 meters, is the Kanaan Winery Ningxia Black Beauty 迦南美地黑骏马红葡萄酒 2021 (No. 9), a consistently outstanding cabernet sauvignon-merlot blend. This wine impresses with its depth, complexity and verticality, alongside a freshness that keeps it in a league of its own.
Those who love chardonnays will find another delicious expression from the biodynamically farmed Silver Heights Chardonnay Ningxia Family Reserve 银色高地家族珍藏霞多丽 2022, which took seventh place on this list, showing excellent purity, acidity and minerality. It is worth noting that the winery received its Demeter certification recently after years of practicing organic and biodynamic farming, which marks a big step up for Ningxia.
The Long Dai Qiushan 瓏岱丘山 2021 (No. 10) is the only bottle from Shandong that made it into the Top 10. This year marks the 15th anniversary of DBR Lafite’s China estate in Penglai’s Qiushan Valley. The DBR team decided to commemorate this milestone with the debut of 2021, a relatively cool vintage and a year where heavy rains in September and October prompted an early harvest for Long Dai.
The wine emerged as a deeply colored, velvety expression of the vintage, containing its highest percentage of marselan (31 percent) so far, alongside 50 percent cabernet sauvignon and 19 percent cabernet franc. It boasts exotic fragrance, freshness and filigreed density.
While it is a striking Long Dai that is almost on par with the distinguished 2018 vintage, which in my opinion had more Bordelais refinement and layers, it comes with a hefty price tag of over $350 per bottle. This means it is the second most expensive wine on the list, trailing only the Dan Sheng Di Shangri-La Sulu Heritage de L’Himalaya 2018 (No. 100), which is a well-crafted mountain cabernet sauvignon from Shangri-La that offers profound depth, complexity and velvety, hedonist tannins but demands the gobsmackingly high price of $1,600-plus per bottle.
In a list that prioritizes quality and value, we want to show the world that the best wines from China do not need to come with exorbitant price tags, as Grace Vineyard has shown. Puchang Vineyard in Xinjiang’s Turpan basin is another producer that impresses in this regard, with their delectable and mineral-rich Puchang Vineyard Rkatsiteli Xinjiang Turpan 2020, our No. 3 Chinese wine, priced at a modest $30 per bottle. Its skin-contact version, the Puchang Vineyard Rkatsiteli Xinjiang Turpan Orange 蒲昌酒庄白羽橘酒 2021 comes in at No. 20 and is one of the two orange wines selected for this list.
A similar narrative unfolds with Canaan Winery, situated in Hebei Huailai. Its Chapter and Verse Syrah Huailai Mastery 诗百篇特选西拉2018 is No. 19 on our list, while the Chapter and Verse Huailai Select Blend 诗百篇优选混酿干红葡萄酒 2018 and Chapter and Verse Sauvignon Blanc Huailai Mastery 诗百篇特选长相思2020 follows closely at No. 21 and 33, respectively. These offerings not only exemplify beautifully balanced wines, but also the balance of quality versus price and scrumptiousness versus affordability.
This sentiment extends to a cohort of young and talented winemakers across China. Their delectable wines, whether red, white, orange, natural or pet-nat, not only offer delightful drinkability but also remain accessible to a wider audience. Emerging names such as Lingering Clouds, Petit Mont, Domaine des Aromes, and Myst Vineyard all deserve special mention for their commitment to crafting wines that are not only well-made and delicious but also reasonably priced.
It is important to note that this list prioritizes quality first and foremost, with price, the “wow factor,” production volume and market availability also taken into consideration. To maintain diversity, no more than three wines per winery/brand have been selected for inclusion. There are 79 reds, 17 whites, two orange wines and two sparklings on the list, most of which come from Ningxia, Yunnan, Hebei, Xinjiang and Shandong.
And while this list does not represent the definitive answer to China’s best wines, it aims to offer an informed opinion and a panoramic view of the outstanding and the improved wines and the intriguing developments within China’s wine landscape over the past year.
–Zekun Shuai, Senior Editor
Note: The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated in 2023 by the tasters at JamesSuckling.com. You can sort the wines below by country, vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.
