China Annual Tasting Report: Aiming Beyond Borders

Our recently published Top 100 Wines of China 2024 report exemplifies China’s winemaking potential and growing diversity of styles at a variety of price points, with an emphasis on value and accessibility – not to mention fun.

We believe that these are also the key factors most producers take into consideration as they push the boundaries of what is possible with winemaking in the country, using native grapes and international varieties to craft homespun offerings that cater to an audience beyond borders.

The 499 tasting notes below – 49 of the wines we rated achieved scores of 94 points or above – underline the remarkable progress China has made in achieving an international standard for its wines in a relatively short period of time, essentially over the past 20 years.

But amid China's sluggish GDP performance and sagging consumer confidence, "consumption downgrading" has become a key trend, with consumers aiming for the practical and affordable in their spending choices, including their purchases of wines.

Terry Xu Wei, a wine educator and social media personality who runs a popular wine shop on the online shopping platform Taobao, said that Chinese consumers are becoming more sensitive to both prices and brands. The most popular wines available from his shop, he said, are affordable, mid-priced offerings that sell from $20 to $50. Within this segment, marselan wines, like the Grace Vineyard Marselan Shanxi Tasya’s Reserve 2022, which sells for about $35, are the most popular, he said.

Marselan, a cross between cabernet sauvignon and grenache, has gained popularity due to its adaptability in the vineyards and its strong appeal to the mass market, with its rich fruit, color and smooth profile making it more accessible to newer consumers, who may shy away from the acidity and tannins often associated with other red wines.

However, some producers’ reliance solely on marselan can often be a compromised choice, since its inherent boldness nudges out the finesse and complexity sought by those with discerning palates. Nevertheless, our top-rated marselan this year, the Domaine Franco-Chinois Marselan Huailai Reserve 2019, stands out as a benchmark for quality.

Domaine Franco-Chinois is the winery that introduced the marselan grape to China in the late 1990s after its founding under a China-France wine cooperation agreement that aimed to make the Hualai region, in northern Hebei province, the “Bordeaux of China” through several joint initiatives. Although those ambitions fell short of being fully realized, Domaine Franco-Chinois and its sister winery, Canaan, have helped to revive fortunes in Huailai, in part through some fantastic offerings like Canaan’s Chapter and Verse Syrah Huailai Reserve 2019, which was our Chinese Wine of the Year for 2024.

Our Top 100 Wines of China 2024 report noted the geographical shift in top-quality wine production from areas like Huailai and the western autonomous region of Ningxia toward the southwestern part of the country, especially in the distant, elevated vineyards of the Diqing Shangri-la area of Yunnan province, whose complex mosaic of terroirs has become a key source for premium – though often limited-production – wines.

With a tiny yield and production, demand for these offerings consistently exceeds supply, especially for a few highly sought-after chardonnays produced in 1,000- to 2,000-bottle batches, such as the awe-inspiring wines made by the Muxin and Xiao Ling wineries. The arrival of winemakers from Ningxia, including Zhang Yan Zhi of Xige Winery, who is currently spearheading two new projects in Yunnan, underscores the increasing investment in this promising area.

Meanwhile, Xinjiang, a vast and largely underdeveloped region in northwest China, presents a diverse array of terroirs ripe for external investment, especially for quality wines produced in significant quantities with accessible prices from vineyards owned by the local Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which has been playing a critical role in developing Xinjiang’s wine industry.

The difficult, rainy 2024 vintage in Ningxia seems to have aroused even more interest in the southwest, with more and more Ningxia winemakers, like Zhang, exploring new possibilities in the region. And with Ao Yun’s stunning 2020 vintage reaching a new qualitative height – we gave it a rating of 99 points, making it our highest-scoring Chinese wine in 2024 – it’s easy to see why winemakers are going there.

Xu Wei said wines from well-known wineries (and brands) in Yunnan like Ao Yun and Xiao Ling, as well as from Silver Heights in Ningxia, are generally his most popular offerings with Chinese consumers, even as emerging producers are striving for greater visibility on China’s wine scene. But for both well-established and up-and-coming producers, the path to greater recognition may lie in creating wines that are fun, affordable and diverse.

Innovative approaches to winemaking have helped both cohorts, especially for one group of next-generation winemakers pooling their resources, expertise and vitality as they aim for a more tailored approach to Chinese consumer tastes. We reported on the group, Young Generation China Wine, last year. It is led by Ian Dai, a former wine educator and the current winemaker behind the natural wine project Xiao Pu. Besides the Xiao Pu wines, its members’ offerings include tea-infused chardonnay pet-nats from Liu Jian Jun’s Lingering Clouds and the outstanding wines and fruit-fermented drinks of Luo Yuchen’s project, Farmentation.

Dai said that while the group for now is “very relaxed and laid back” – if somewhat disorganized – it is gaining in steam as a platform for introducing new, smaller producers to a wider audience, both in China and abroad.

According to China’s General Administration of Customs, the country saw a rebound in both volume and value in wine imports in 2024 after a six-year decline, although the increase was largely attributed to a resurgence of Australian wine imports following the lifting of tariffs on them last year.

The challenge now for Chinese wine producers is to take a more expansive look at their customer base and potential wine offerings to make higher-quality bottles at reasonable prices so they can secure a firmer place in the increasingly competitive domestic, and global, markets.

– Zekun Shuai, Senior Editor

Note: The list of wines below is comprised of bottles tasted and rated in 2024 by the tasters at JamesSuckling.com. You can sort the wines by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.