China’s potential lures an adventurous winemaker from France(2)
“But I think improvement is coming,” Boyce said. “The Chinese people pick up trends very quickly, and they get sophisticated about new things very quickly. You are already seeing that in the number of wine bars opening up.”
Winemaking tradition
Despite a winemaking history that dates back to 6,000 B.C. to 7,000 B.C., wine fell out of favor in modern China. Xinjiang continued to produce a wide variety of grapes for table fruit and raisins, however, and modern winemaking began in the late 1970s after Deng Xiaoping launched China down the path of reform.
Nauleau’s employer, Vini-Suntime International Co., began in 1998 with the backing of a conglomerate that owns everything from coal fields to hotels to petrol plants.
From the beginning it had a global outlook: It imported technology from France, Italy, the United States, Germany and Switzerland and exported bulk wine to the United States, France, Cuba and other countries. Desks in the sales department are piled with books such as “Speaking Russian” and “Speaking Japanese.”
Nauleau arrived in 2000, after a career in vineyards and wine labs in France. He was no stranger to developing countries. He had previously helped get wineries off the ground in Bulgaria. But even so, he was taken aback by what he found in China.
“The workers were very young. They had more experience in the baijiu industry or fermentation but not in wine,” he said. “I had to show them how to connect a pump.
“I stayed here because I was so surprised with the quality of the grapes,” he added.
He learned Chinese, met and married a woman from the area and, except for three years back in France, he has remained ever since in Manas, a low-slung town about an hour’s drive from Urumqi, the provincial capital.
This is not quite Bordeaux. Xinjiang sits farther from the sea than almost any place on the planet. That makes the climate drier and prone to more dramatic swings than other wine-growing regions. Nauleau and other Xinjiang winemakers have come to see their location as an ideal place to develop Chinese wine.
“We rely on irrigation, and the water comes mostly from the Tian Shan mountains. So we can control the amount of water,” he said. “The grapes are sweeter because of the difference in temperature between the day and night. And there is more than 1,600 hours of sunlight per year. Because the climate is dry, there are very few pests, so no need for pesticides.”
Global warming
Though winery worker Ding Fanhua, 24, knew little of wine before he landed a job in Suntime’s vineyards, he now helps oversee a crop made up of the same varieties found in Bordeaux: cabernet sauvignon, merlot, syrah and cabernet franc.
“There was a lot of snow last year, so the grape output this year will be down,” Ding said, crouching to examine some small plump fruit. “This year the weather is hot and there is little rain so the grape color will be good and the sugar level will be good.”
As in other new winemaking regions along the 45th parallel, Nauleau is familiar with predictions that global warming could usher in a new ascendancy. He doesn’t know if they will hold true, but he has already seen how temperature changes can affect his wines.
“In 2000 the snow was falling even while we are still picking the grapes,” he said. “I’ll never forget that. But last year, for example, even at the end of November it was not too cold.
