Ao Yun 2016: Another Peak for China?

Last week at James Suckling Wine Central in Hong Kong, James sat down with Maxence Dulou, the French-born winemaker and estate manager of Ao Yun, one of the most prestigious wineries in China. Owned by luxury goods company LVMH (which also owns Cheval Blanc and Chateau d’Yquem) and one of the highest wineries in China too – its 28 hectares of vineyards sit in the Mekong valley at 2,200m-2,600m above sea level in northern Yunnan Province, southwest of China – could this be the face of China’s wine future? 

When Ao Yun’s debut 2013 vintage came out, it was hyped as China’s first cult wine, retailing at over $300 a bottle with a limited quantity produced. At that time, few people could have imagined that China was capable of producing a world-class cabernet blend whose price topped some of the most revered new-world names such as Opus One and Almaviva.

Last year, we tasted 140 Chinese wines (with more to come this year). That is not a vast number, but 55 percent received 90+ points. We are confident in saying that China’s era of producing quality wine has arrived, which is very different to the situation 15 years ago. And the Ao Yun 2015, of the 140 bottles we tasted, received the highest score of 95 points. (See our report here: SMALL CHINA TASTING REVEALS BIG PROGRESS FROM TOP PRODUCERS)

“2015 was our warmest and driest year with a big yield for us but still only around 2,700 liters per hectare,” said Dulou.

The high altitude of Shangri-La assures the ripeness of the wine with intense sunshine and solar radiation framed in a moderate climate, which is not as wet as Shandong, and far less extreme than China’s modern wine hub Ningxia, where vines need to be buried in the soil to “hibernate” through the cold winter.

“For us, each vintage lends its unique characteristics to the wine as the weather is quite variable – even within a day. And 2016 was our coolest vintage until mid-July, followed by a very sunny and dry season with the highest temperature recorded in August, which helped a lot.”

The cool 2016 vintage unveils a purity of polished fruit in the glass, both red and black, with some adornments of fresh leaves. It is a harmonious melange of richness and freshness, but in a broad, layered form that is shaped with class and depth. (See the tasting notes of 2016 and 2015 vintages below)

“For this vintage, we also tried to use less new oak, at around 35 percent, but more one-year-old barrels, which makes the wine an honest and heartfelt utterance of our terroir through finesse, freshness and complexity with long aging potential,” explained Dulou. “And for the first time in the blend, we have added some syrah (4 percent) and petit verdot (2 percent) that we planted in 2013, which fine-tuned the dense fruit and added more complexity and length to the wine.”

Although the first vintage was 2013, Ao Yun’s vineyards are not as young. Half of the vines were planted in 2000 by Tibetan farmers, and the rest were planted between 2013 and 2015 after a comprehensive study on the soil and climate. Today, the 28-hectare vineyards are divided into 314 blocks, and most are leased to 114 families, who tend the vines organically and sustainably.

“One of the challenges for us is communication, as the local farmers are Chinese Tibetan minority and the technical team is Chinese Han or other Yunnan minorities. In practice, we have a four-level management, mainly to break down the language barriers, from French/English to Mandarin and then to Tibetan, with some other dialects mixed in the middle. It is a teamwork adventure!”

This year marks only the fourth vintage of this premium Chinese wine. As Dulou and his team are gaining more experience with their amazing terroir and the people who care for it, they have blazed a new trail in this distant, almost isolated Xanadu in which the conglomerate Moet Hennessy continues to invest heavily.

With the vines picking up some age in the future, we have every reason to believe that Ao Yun’s journey as a fine wine from China has just started. If you got a chance to taste the new vintage, you would probably agree that Ao Yun has lived up to the hype as a legendary Chinese wine, and it will continue to ride high in China.

Read the new tasting notes of 2016 and 2015 (retasted) from James below, as well as the other vintages.

– Zekun Shuai, associate editor in Beijing