The Other Chinese Wine

While Chinese rice wines like Shaoxing wine and grain spirits are better known to the rest of the world, China has been crafting wine from grapes since some period between 7000BC (relatively unlikely, but not impossible) to 600AD (definitely). Grape wine consumption overall is quite marginal, as China's predilection is still for hard liquor and beer. In the present era, China consumes about a quarter of the world's spirits, but only two percent of the grape wine.

The stereotype of Chinese taste for wine is for sweet and thin rather than floral and complex; a stereotype that is fast proving to be wrong. In Slate, Mike Steinberger writes:

"I lived in Hong Kong in the mid-1990s, just before the British colony was returned to Chinese rule. Hong Kong was a sophisticated city with a number of major wine collectors, but the mainland was a vinous frontier, and the tales of mainland wine culture that filtered out were wild (and often carried a distinct whiff of condescension): Stories of Château Petrus being mixed with Coca-Cola and similar crimes being perpetrated against other prestigious wines were widely circulated.

"More than a decade later, a vibrant and increasingly savvy wine culture has takenroot in China. The country's wine consumption jumped more than 50 percent during the first half of this decade and is on course to increase another 70 percent during the second half."

Even marginal growth in the wine market the size of China is gigantic. The growing interest has spawned a small conundrum: the interest in wine has outpaced the ability for locals to describe them in Mandarin. This is not a problem with a lack of words but a lack of agreed referents. In the judging of Shanghai's first sommelier competition, Chantal Chi from Chinese wine blog (and atrocious pun) Grape Wall of China mentions this problem of semantics.

"These candidates are not at ease at all in describing wines with Mandarin! I found it sad that they blended English words such as “full-bodied”, “blackberries”, “tannic” and “oaky” into their Mandarin sentences. As well, their references to things such as blackberries have no meaning to a Chinese who has never tasted these flavors.

I asked one finalist why she could not find the proper word in Mandarin while describing wines. The answer: she is used to English, not Mandarin, terminology. I further asked, how do you recommend wines to guests? The answer: most clients are Westerners and overseas Chinese who understand English. Finally, I asked, how do you deal with local Chinese who are uncomfortable using English? The answer: she had none."

How do you describe the taste of something never tasted before?