Red Red Wine

This week, in the Food Issue, I write about China’s sudden
romance with wine. The notion of getting rich by selling wine in China has a
long history, which is marked almost entirely by failure. When the Changyu
winery opened in 1892, the first winemaker was an Austro-Hungarian diplomat
named Baron M. von Babo. When he took the job, Baron von Babo boldly ordered a
hundred and forty thousand seedlings from abroad in order to start a vineyard.
But seventy per cent of them died before they reached Chinese soil.
Prospects have sharply improved since the days of the Baron, and, today, China
is one of the world’s fastest-growing wine markets. (Chinese buyers are
consuming so much that they are affecting wine prices for some of the most
expensive bottles.) In this video, produced by Mengfan Wu, we visit a wine class
hosted by Torres China, which is trying to introduce new consumers to an
unfamiliar product. We also hear from Don St. Pierre, Jr., the chief executive
of A.S.C. Fine Wines, who explains why Chinese consumers sometimes prefer to
down their glasses in a single enthusiastic gulp.