During this year’s China National Day holiday, Tingting Wu went to visit a few vineyards in Yinchuan in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, the location of some of the best wineries in China. A new region for the world map of wines, wine has been produced in the Helan Mountain Eastern Foothills for almost 4 decades. However it has only gained worldwide recognition over the last ten years as a result of winning awards in various top international wine competitions.

While living in Paris, I learned about wine and gained my WSET Level 3 certificate. China had not yet been included in the world map of wines, at least not in the WSET textbook, so I knew little about Chinese wines until I went on a trip to Ningxia and visited a number of wineries there. As a Chinese, I am very proud of the development of the Helan Mountain Eastern Foothills area, and was impressed with the potential of the Marselan grape in China. I will be following what is happening in China’s wine industry, in particular the development of Marselan as a signature grape for China.