Our Top 100 Wines of China list is drawn from the more than 540 bottles we tasted over the past 12 months, and we hope it delivers the message that today's Chinese wines are affordable, diverse and fun to drink – all factors that could boost demand amid a declining mainland market. And it’s these X-factors that we’ve taken into consideration when compiling this list, along with our usual criteria of quality, value, availability and the “wow” factor. But after thorough consideration of all these components among the top wines we tasted from the country, we have picked the Chapter and Verse Syrah Huailai Reserve 诗百篇珍藏西拉 2019 as our Chinese Wine of the Year.

The Chapter and Verse is a consistent, neoclassical syrah made by Canaan winery in Hebei province’s Huailai County, about 120 kilometers northwest of Beijing. Along with its neighboring sister winery, Domaine Franco-Chinois, Canaan winery is one of China’s top producers, and together they work meticulously to exhibit the potential of a winemaking area that started booming half a century ago.

I visited Canaan earlier this year for the fourth time, and found the quality of its wines to be just as consistent as always despite significant vintage fluctuations. Its chief winemaker, Zhao Desheng, said 2019 was a very good year for them, characterized by a warm, dry summer and cool autumn, resulting in a healthy crop. The quality of the wines from this vintage matches that of other top years like 2014 and 2017.

The Chapter and Verse 2019 boasts impressive concentration and depth while maintaining freshness and polished tannins, highlighting its meaty and peppery aspect. Although it won’t be released until mid-2025, its expected retail price of about $120 offers a less expensive alternative to our No. 2 Chinese wine, the Ao Yun Shangri-La 2020, which goes for approximately $300, making it one of the priciest wines on this list.

I tasted the Ao Yun 2020 with the estate manager and technical director Maxence Dulou in our Hong Kong office earlier this year, and the wine stood out as the best vintage to date, and it perfectly illustrates how less can be more in a wine.

With a lower pH of 3.35 and an alcohol content of 13.5 percent, this vintage offers a brighter profile with less concentration than its predecessors but more precision, crunch and finesse. The more balanced yield of around 900 grams per plant, compared with the more concentrated 800 grams in 2019, contributes to a harmonious palate, emphasizing nuanced complexity and demureness from this cabernet-driven blend with minor additions of merlot, syrah and petit verdot.

Dulou said 2020 was a homogeneous vintage, with a rainy winter and cool spring followed by a warm, dry summer that resulted in an even, healthy and slightly later harvest across Ao Yun’s mosaic of vineyards, which span 28 hectares and 314 plots in four villages. For 2020, Ao Yun also separately bottled three single-village “cru” wines – the Xidang, Adong and Sinong – that are close in quality to the flagship wine. Most notably, the Moet Hennessy Shangri-La Sinong Cru 2020 ranks 13th on our list, which also reflects the excellence of the 2020 harvest.

SHIFTING LANDSCAPES

One thing that stands out among our top Chinese bottles this year is the geographical shift in quality toward the southwestern part of the country – especially in the far, elevated vineyards of the Diqing Shangri-la area of Yunnan province.

Characterized by its complex, fragmented and hard-to-get-to terroirs, this region is becoming a key source for premium – though often limited-production – wines. Naturally, some are adopting a Burgundian approach to vineyard management, acquiring and classifying small parcels typically under one or two hectares. With a tiny yield and production, demand consistently exceeds supply, especially for a few highly sought-after chardonnays.

Last year, our Chinese Wine of the Year was the Xiao Ling’s Chardonnay Shangri-la 2021, and this year we’ve noticed that the release price of the new vintage has doubled, in line with the growing trend for Yunnan's top wines.

This year, the Xiao Ling Chardonnay Shangri-la 2022 is our No. 4 Chinese wine, just behind the No. 3 Mu Xin Chardonnay Shangri-La Muxin 2022, which is another pricy offering. But both are exceptional renditions of world-class Yunnan chardonnays that reflect their high-altitude origins, boasting intense flavors and mouthwatering acidity with relatively higher alcohol levels.

“The limit here for great wine is high,” Muxin founder and winemaker Mou Chao said of the mountainous region where winemakers are laser-focused on quality over pushing large amounts of bottles out the door.

From the even higher mountains in Yunnan’s southeast, smaller projects spearheaded by independent winemakers, such as Petit Mont, which is run by the couple of Ma Jie and Yu Qian, also placed a number of wines on our China list. Their fresh and depthy Petit Mont Cabernet Sauvignon Yan Jing Baima Snow Mountain 寸山盐井赤霞珠干红葡萄酒 2022 finished at No. 25 on this list while their Petit Mont Vidal Yunnan Diqing Baima Snow Mountain 寸山白马雪山寒时晚采收甜白葡萄酒 2021 (No. 36) shows terrific concentration and acidity with a lengthy, energetic finish.

Chinese wines in a less spectacular price range than the high-end Yunnan offerings can be highly sought after on the market, especially those with great quality-to-price ratios like marselans from Grace Vineyard and Puchang’s saperavi and rkatsitelis offerings.

One of Puchang winery’s rkatsitelis in our Top 10, the Puchang Vineyard Rkatsiteli Xinjiang Turpan Orange 蒲昌酒庄白羽橘酒 2022 (No. 6) is a real standout. Crafted by Italian winemaker Loris Tartaglia, it is fermented on the lees for over a month before being aged for two years in 2,000-liter casks.

Grace Vineyard’s first experimental red, the Grace Vineyard China Sonata Series The Origin 怡园酒庄奏鸣曲干红 2021 – a blend from Shanxi and Ningxia – also makes the list and can be found in No. 8. I tasted a small vertical of this wine earlier this year, with the older vintages showing how the initial balance at youth was critical for aging.

Our No. 7 wine, and one of the best values on the list, is the Longting Vineyard Chardonnay Penglai Sea Breeze 龙亭海风莱霞多丽白葡萄酒 2021, which is a standout for its ilk, showcasing a refreshing flintiness and salinity typical of Shandong’s coastal chardonnays.

Another smart buy in the Top 10 is a cabernet gernischt – China’s answer to carmenere, often with a distinctive note of lifted dried-herb pepperiness. Sadly, the grape seems to have fallen out of favor, with production declining in recent years. But the Tangting Xialu Winery Xingjiang Wujiaqu 唐庭霞露红葡萄酒 (No. 10) is a refined and peppery example that showcases the unique identity of this variety, which is deserving of more attention.

Two Ningxia wines are also in our Top 10 this year. The Ren Yi Yuan Cabernet Franc Ningxia 仁益源·仁品丽珠 2022 (No. 5), was the most impressive wine of the 200-plus bottles I tasted in a November during a blind tasting in Yinchuan. It’s a unique cabernet franc that shows richness and density with discerning notes of tapenade and smoky black olives, highlighting cabernet franc’s pyrazine-led freshness and intriguing complexity.

An excitingly fun and great-value option is an innovative pet-nat (pétillant naturel) from artisanal winemaker Liu Jianjun. His lightly smoky Lingering Clouds Ningxia Pet-Nat Chardonnay and Yellow Tea 停云霞多丽加香起泡酒（黄茶) 2024 (No. 9), priced at just $30, is a delightful alternative to fine craft beer. Liu’s “Cha+donnay” concept (“cha” means tea in Chinese) merges a variety of added tea leaves and chardonnay, resulting in vivid, creamy bubblies with cloudiness. His similarly crafted Oolong version is nearly as impressive and ranks at No. 32. It is already Liu’s fourth vintage of pet-nat and the best so far for these tea-infused bubblies.

Liu’s wines underscore the nascent movement among young Chinese winemakers to produce fun and less conventional wines as they try to appeal to younger consumers looking for affordable, delicious and unpretentious offerings.

This year’s Top 100 list does acknowledge this laid-back, adventurous spirit, but check out all the wines below to see the broad – and excellent – range that’s available in the mainland today. There are four orange wines on the list, four sparklings, two dessert wines and 17 whites, while the rest are reds. Many of these are made with minimal intervention, and varieties range from cabernet sauvignons and francs to marselans and syrahs, as well as rarer varieties like roussanne, grechetto, barbera, petit verdot and aglianico.

With China’s recent access to the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV) as a member country, China's wine market is geared for a greater growth, especially considering the amount of foreign investment flowing into the sector by, among others, Pernod Ricard, LVMH, DBR Lafite and, most recently, TWE, which acquired a 75 percent stake in Ningxia’s Stone and Moon winery last month. Penfolds’ premium China wine, the Penfolds China CWT521 2022, which is a blend of marselan from Ningxia and cabernet sauvignon from Yunnan, is ranked No. 91 on this list.

Likewise, we anticipate that affordable Chinese wines with real character and unique identities will gain greater recognition, not only among Chinese consumers but from wine lovers worldwide. We hope you enjoy exploring this list and can go out and grab a few bottles of these terrific Chinese wines.

– 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.