Every November the vineyards of Ningxia vanish. Workers bend the canes to the ground and cover them with earth; only in late March or April are the vines dug out again. Without this burial the winter at the eastern foot of the Helan Mountains, where the temperature drops below minus 20 degrees, would kill them. It is an extreme place: a strip of irrigated desert at about 1,100 metres on the plain of the Yellow River, at 38 degrees north, with about 200 millimetres of rain and 2,800 to 3,000 hours of sunshine a year. The mountains to the west keep off the sand and cold of the desert beyond; the river to the east makes the vine possible at all.
Vines out of the desert
The region has been built rather than grown. Around the turn of the century the government of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region decided that wine would turn gravel plains into an industry; the Helan Mountain East Foothill zone has been protected as a geographical indication since the early 2000s, and since 2013 the region has classified its estates on the model of Bordeaux, today in five tiers reviewed every two years. Ningxia now counts about 40,000 hectares of wine grapes, by its own reckoning roughly a third of China’s. That is a small part of the country’s roughly 755,000 hectares of vines (OIV 2023), because most Chinese vines carry table grapes. The vineyards lie high: Visperterminen in Valais, at about 1,150 metres one of Europe’s highest sites, would be an average spot here. Altitude gives cold nights and keeps the acidity; the dry air keeps mildew away.
In the glass
The grapes the region is known for, by sweetness, acidity, tannin and body.
| Grape | Sweetness | Acidity | Tannin | Body |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cabernet Sauvignon | dry | medium to high | medium(+) to high | medium to full |
| Merlot | dry | medium(−) to medium | medium(−) to medium(+) | medium to full |
| Carmenère | dry | medium(−) to medium | medium(−) to medium | medium to medium(+) |
| Chardonnay | dry | medium to high | white, no tannin | medium(−) to full |
Each grape’s typical range worldwide, not in this region alone, on the WSET tasting grid (Level 3, 2022): dry to luscious, low to high, light to full. The dot before each name shows the colour of a typical bottle.
The trophy of 2011
The wider world noticed in 2011, when Jia Bei Lan 2009 from the small Helan Qingxue estate, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Gernischt, China’s name for Carmenère, won an International Trophy at the Decanter World Wine Awards, the first for a Chinese wine. Some doubted aloud that it could really come from China; the following years answered them. Silver Heights, where the Bordeaux-trained Emma Gao makes the wine, Kanaan and Jade Vineyard became the names of a new generation. Moët Hennessy makes its Chandon sparkling wine here (its red Ao Yun, by contrast, comes from the mountains of Yunnan, far to the south). Cabernet Sauvignon leads by a distance; beside it grow Merlot, Cabernet Gernischt and, increasingly, Marselan, a French cross of Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache from 1961 that has found a second home in China, with Chardonnay for the whites and the sparkling wines.
Sense of scale
40,000 ha Ningxia has about 2.8× as many vines as all of Switzerland.
One square is all of Switzerland: about 14,350 hectares of vines.
Vineyards compared
Vineyard area in hectares, rounded, as the articles give it. Regions without a reliable figure are left out.
Altitude in the glass
Ningxia’s reds are dark and ripe, with blackcurrant, plum and a note of mint or herbs, firm tannin and a freshness the altitude preserves; the best show restraint rather than power, and Marselan adds violets and softer tannin. They want food. The region is famous for its lamb, and roast or braised lamb with cumin is the local match, at 16 to 18 degrees, with an hour of air for the young wines. The sparkling Chardonnay, well chilled, proves that the desert can also be light.