China's Best Wine Ever? Ao Yun Shangri-La 2018 Put to Test

Is the Ao Yun Shangri-La 敖云云南香格里拉 2018 China’s best wine ever? After tasting and rating it in Hong Kong last week, I gave it 98 points – the highest score I’ve given to any Chinese bottle, red or white, making it the greatest offering to come out of the country.

I loved the depth and complexity of the nose that brings you deeply down into the wine, showing blackberry, ink, tar, earth, incense, cloves and black licorice. Thyme, too. And the purity of fruit with cassis is the real thing. This is full-bodied but it remains so fresh and vertical on the palate. A  blend of 60 percent cabernet sauvignon, 19 percent cabernet franc, 10 percent merlot, 7 percent syrah and 4 percent petit verdot, it still needs three or four years to come together in the bottle before opening.

The Ao Yun 2018 comes from the famous winery of Moet Hennessy, which is located in Deqin County of Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in northern Yunnan. The mountainous region is spectacular, with unique vineyards from the valley floor to mountain high. Ao Yun means “flying above the clouds,” and there is certainly something weightless and ethereal about the wine.

I tasted the wine at James Suckling Wine Central with Ao Yun winemaker Maxence Dulou, who agreed it was his greatest effort yet in bottle. “The 2018 shows the uniqueness and diversity of our terroirs,” said the Frenchman. “We had the rain at the right moment to allow the grape to ripen perfectly and finally the fall was cool and it ripened the grape, and it gave the identity of the terroir and the vintage. It is a better vintage than 2016 and 2017.”

VILLAGE VINTAGES

Dulou brought four other wines to rate. They were the first commercial releases of a new project where the various village vineyards, or crus, of Ao Yun are separately bottled, and not all will be bottled each year. About 1,200 to 1,800 bottles are expected to be made of each cru. The bottles are labeled with the name of each village vineyard: Adong, Shuori, Xidang and Sinong. The latter was not bottled in 2018 because all of it went into the Ao Yun, which is a blend of the four.

The Adong was bottled in both red and white, and the Moet Hennessy Chardonnay Shangri-La Adong Cru 酩悦轩尼诗香格里拉阿东 Cru 2018 was like China’s answer to Chablis, with a green apple and mineral character. It clearly showed the high-altitude nature of the vineyards

The best of the single-vineyard reds was the Moet Hennessy Shangri-La Xidang Cru 酩悦轩尼诗香格里拉西当 Cru 2018. It had first-class purity of fruit with lots of blackcurrant and other dark berry character, as well as ultra-fine tannins. It was a blend of mostly cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc but with 20 percent petit verdot.

Dulou said the wines will be released in the fall in Bordeaux. Prices for the crus should be from 40 percent to 70 percent of the normal price for Ao Yun, which is about $275 a bottle.

When I asked Dulou if any of the other winemakers in Moet Hennessy helped with the blend of Ao Yun or the crus such as those from Bordeaux’s Cheval Blanc, he quickly responded: “In the end, it is the Ao Yun team that makes the winemaking decisions because we know our place more than anyone.… It will take decades to find the full potential for our terroir. It will take a long time, but we are moving quickly!”

– James Suckling, Chairman/Editor