Five leading producers
Château Changyu- Moser XV Changyu is China’s oldest wine producer, founded in the Shandong Province, with its origins dating to the late 19th century. It has marked its arrival in Ningxia with a stunning European-style château that cost £49 million and opened in 2012 with an 800-strong barrel cellar and museum to Chinese wine history. It is making some of the best wines of the region, especially since it began working in 2005 with fifthgeneration Austrian winemaker Lenz Moser as a consultant. Chateau Helan Qingxue Founded in 2005, this is one of the estates that put Ningxia on the map through its Jia Bei Lan wine. Winemaker Zhang Jing was partly self-taught and partly educated by Professor Li Demei, gaining experience via an exchange programme that took her to the Rhône Valley and then Australia. Today she spends part of her year teaching in Adelaide as a visiting winemaker, and is one of the most exciting names in Ningxia. Helan Qingxue remains a boutique winery with 15ha planted and a focus on quality, picking among the earliest in the region and avoiding cellar techniques such as acidification.
Château Zhihui Yuanshi The most impressive of all the wineries that I visited, not because of its scale but because it is built with local stone (the owners apparently made their money in quarries), using local craftsmen, in the traditional Chinese fortress style of the region. At every turn you find granite, sandstone, wood carvings, vast cavernous spaces, paved pathways and impressive sculptures and other works of art. It produces about 70,000 bottles at the moment, 10% white, with some contract vineyards as well as its own grapes. Certified organic.
Legacy Peak Owner Lui Hai was the first to plant in the eastern foothills of the mountains on rockier soils at over 1,200m altitude near the Xixia Kings’ Tombs. The vines are now 20 years old and harvest here begins about 15 days later than at other vineyards in the region, allowing for a longer, slower ripening season. All of this means complexity and nuance in the wines, and the estate is known for its excellent Chardonnay (though this grape covers just 0.8ha, with most of the vineyard given over to Cabernet Sauvignon and a small amount of Merlot). It was the first Ningxia winery to get an export licence.
Silver Heights Another leading light of the region, Gao Yuan (known as Emma) runs the winery with her husband, Thierry Courtade, who she met when working as an intern at Château Calon-Ségur in St-Estèphe (he was there for 24 years and retains a thick Médoc accent). Still boutique in terms of focus and feel, the estate has 70ha of vines across two sites, at 1,200m altitude, with more gravelly terroir than many of the sand-dominant wineries of the area. Gao is the viticulturist and winemaker, while Courtade is the cellarmaster, with 15 full-time staff working alongside them to produce about 50,000 bottles a year.