Dalian Delights: Seafood and the Wine Scene off China¡¯s North-East Coast(1)
Editor¡¯s Note: After reading the title of this post, you may be pondering why Catavino has an article on North-East Chinese cuisine, which is a very good question. Edward Ragg, our Chinese correspondent, has been sharing his experiences living in Beijing as a wine consultant, which have included very detailed and descriptive articles on the state of Spanish wine in east Asia, as well as his experience with pairing traditional Chinese foods with Iberian wine. Considering that Edward is magically finding time to share his knowledge with us, between wine fairs and teaching WSET courses, we are clearly very appreciative. And if you have any questions for Edward, please don¡¯t hesistate to put them in the comments.
It’s now almost two years since my wife, Fongyee, and I moved to China to begin work as wine consultants, a profession that barely exists in a country that only really began importing wine some fifteen years ago and whose own wine industry is dominated by massive government corporations.
Much of that time has, of course, been devoted to setting up a company ‡° no easy thing in the PRC ‡° getting to know the wine importers and fledgling wine magazines as well as becoming more and more familiar with the different national wine markets ‡° Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and further a field ‡° the extent of wine knowledge at consumer and trade levels, people’s expectations of wine in general and what myths v. facts abide in an emergent wine culture.
Trying myriad Chinese wines, judging at Chinese wine competitions and the teething pains of setting up a website and blog ‡° ever works in progress ‡° have had their own challenges. But we can hardly complain: this invaluable experience, by turns exciting, frustrating and occasionally downright baffling, has whetted our appetites and got our palates salivating. We’ll definitely be here for the long-haul, if we can.
But just as I was planning a series of posts entitled, ‘Confessions of a Chinese Wine Consultant’, going right back to January 2007 when we first landed in Beijing, I had the opportunity to go to Dalian, a popular tourist city about an hour’s flight to the north-east of China’s capital, on the attractive peninsula of Liaoning Province (which borders Hebei and Jilin Provinces, Inner Mongolia and North Korea).
As well as having a quick holiday peep at the wine scene there, Fongyee and I, at the behest of her Chinese relatives, were subjected to a two-day eating spree ‡° Chinese entertaining is beyond bountiful ‡° gaining some insights into how a typical middle class family sees eating and drinking and how the older and younger generations view Chinese and international wines.
