Chinese wine has made a new inroad in the UK after one of the country's leading supermarkets, Sainsbury's, said it would place a wine made by Changyu Pioneer Wine Co on its shelves. Sainsbury’s has added Changyu’s Noble Dragon Red to its wine range, the supermarket announced this week to coincide with Chinese New Year. Noble Dragon Red is at the value end of the Changyu range, priced at an ‘introductory offer’ of £8 per bottle in Sainsbury’s. It is a ‘Cabernet Gernischt’ with Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc blended in, from the Yantai region. Cabernet Gernischt is the name given to Carmenère in China. The move follows the launch of Changyu wines at Berry Bros & Rudd, the London-based independent merchant known to supply the Queen’s wine cellar. ‘We know customers are keen to broaden their repertoire and we’ve been looking to some distinctive regions and countries for new additions to expand our range,’ said Georgina Haughton, Sainsbury’s wine buyer for South Africa, South America and China.

Changyu is known domestically as China’s oldest wine producer, having been founded in 1892. Changyu’s wines have graced the tables of Chinese government banquets and, despite some financial difficulties, the company has been at the forefront of wine’s rising popularity in China. Can this lesser-known French variety win in China? The top three grape supplying Chinese wine regions are currently Xinjiang, Shandong and Hebei, the government report says. Berry Bros and Rudd has announced it is the first major UK retailer to give Chinese wines a permanent place…While already on sale in Britain through Berry Bros & Rudd at around £40 a bottle, Moser is currently in talks with “two major supermarkets” in the UK regarding creating an own-label range exclusively for the chosen supermarket. “We’ve had a very positive response, which is exciting. I think the timing is right – we would never have been able to do this five years ago,” Moser told db.

He revealed that the wines will go on sale for “at least £8-9”, rather than falling prey to deep discounting. “Selling Chinese wine in the UK is never a cheap proposition as they can sell every drop they make in China so don’t need us for business,” he said. In addition to the new range, Château Changyu, based in Ningxia, will be launching a second wine in the Bordeaux model called Moser Family Cabernet 2010 in the UK through Berry Bros next January, priced at around £20 a bottle. Having consulted for the winery for seven years, Moser is confident about the potential of the terroir for quality grape growing in Ningxia, where there are currently 100 wineries in existence and a further 50 under construction. “Our vines are planted 1,100m above sea level and benefit from warm days and cool nights. It’s very much a continental climate there and is definitely the region to watch for Chinese winemaking,” he said. “I’ve seen a big quality leap in the Château’s wines in the last few years – it’s not rocket science, I just introduced processes like temperature controlled fermentation and lowered the yields from 30 to 10 tonnes per hectare.

“We manage to make reds that come in at just 12% abv but retain all their flavour. Our Cabernets are where Bordeaux used to be 20 years ago: lighter in colour with less alcohol and sugar. “They have a lovely pure fruit expression and spicy aromas. There’s a signature spice I’ve found in Chinese wines, which I really like,” he added. While it took five years for Moser to gain the trust of the estate’s head winemaker, he now describes the joint venture as a successful union.beer and wine gifts “The Chinese are very proud people; top 10 bc white winesthey were reading books when Europeans were climbing trees, so it took a while for me to gain the trust of the team.best wine school london

“I help make their wine and in return they sell my Grüner Veltliner in China. It’s been a slow process as 95% of Chinese consumers drink red and no one has heard of Grüner Veltliner, but they’re starting to catch on to our whites. “I love making wine in China. It’s a challenge but it’s so exciting. It reminds me of where California was 30 years ago – it’s a real land of opportunity,” he told db. Moser thinks the Chinese have got it right thus far by playing it safe with international grape varieties like Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Chardonnay.best food with port wine “Unfortunately, I’ve yet to taste a wine made from a native Chinese grape that has the potential to one day be a fine wine,” he admitted.what food goes best with port wine His next big project is to plant Grüner Veltliner in China: “Everything is in place and we’re currently experimenting with test plantings at Changyu.new wine 2015 half week

“Ningxia is ideal for growing Grüner Veltliner: it’s dry with warm summers, cool nights and enough water from the neighbouring Yellow River,” he revealed. But before Moser gets his Grüner project in China off the ground, he will be releasing an example from Cappadocia in Turkey, in addition to a duo made from native Turkish grapes.How has it crept up on us? China is now the country with the second largest amount of land given over to wine-growing and yet Chinese wine still feels like a new-fangled innovation. This is partly because we see very little of its annual 11 million hectolitre production here. It’s also because wine culture as we understand it is still so new in China you can almost smell the cellophane wrapping. • What wine goes best with Chinese food? Archaeological evidence suggests grape wine might have been made and consumed in this vast Asian territory as long as 4,600 years ago, and grape wine was popular during the Tang dynasty (618-907). However, European grape varieties for making wine were not planted in China until the late nineteenth century and it is only within living memory that wine drinking culture has begun to be assimilated into society.

A Chinese vineyard near Penglai peninsula in eastern China's Shandong province (AFP) China’s wine-growing areas are both far-flung and diverse. Head deep into the continent, towards the Kazakhstan border in the north-west, and you reach Xinjiang province, home to the point on earth that is most distant (2,645km) from any ocean, as well as the bulk of China’s vineyards. In Ningxia, to the north and centre of the country, winters are icy, with temperatures dropping far below freezing so that the vines have to be buried in little piles of earth to keep them alive. They also make wine in Yunnan, towards Tibet, in the far south, as well as in the areas that surround Beijing which are blessed with a somewhat gentler, maritime climate. • British embassies should serve English wine instead of French vintages, Tory MP says With such variety of both climate and soil, generalisations ought to be impossible. But it remains the case that most Chinese wine is red. The colour obviously has deeply embedded resonances in the Chinese psyche.

A fascination with Bordeaux has also been hugely influential: as a result there is an awful lot of cabernet sauvignon (and some merlot). So what about taste? In terms of quality, regular visitors to China talk of a noticeable upturn in the last decade. China has become one of the world's fastest-growing wine markets (ALAMY) Four years ago a Chinese wine won a trophy for best Bordeaux-style blend at the Decanter wine awards, beating competition from Bordeaux itself to do so. The bottle of winning wine that I tasted didn’t live up to expectations – it tasted like a wine made in a country that hasn’t got the hang of making wine yet. It was also out of condition – a problem I’ve encountered often with Chinese wines and it’s not clear whether this is down to problems at the bottling line, or poor storage. Many taste badly baked, as if they have been exposed to heat and/or light. Still, the event was nonetheless a line in the sand. The rate of improvement in the taste of Chinese wines is probably more telling than any general measure of quality.

Britain’s oldest wine merchant, Berry Bros & Rudd, bowed to the new power in wine when it gave Chinese bottles a permanent place in its St James’ shop two years ago. I was interested to taste the red, made by Chateau Changyu, China’s first modern winery, established in 1892, but to my surprise found that it was the sweet ice wines – made from grapes that are allowed to freeze on the vines - that were most impressive. I re-tasted the two Chinese reds currently offered by Berry Bros & Rudd, both of them made with the assistance of Austrian winemaker Lenz Moser, today. The Ch Changyu Moser XV 2008 (£39) was not looking at all good, with astringent green notes and a smell of baked dead mouse. I’ve tasted this wine three or four times and this is definitely the worst it’s ever looked so possibly an out of condition bottle. But it’s not a wine that has ever made me jump for joy either. The Moser Family Cabernet Sauvignon 2010 (£19.95) is much more promising. It reminds me of the sort of wine you used to find (and still do on occasion) in Chile or Argentina.

There is a warmth and a plushness to the fruit. It is welcoming, yawning at you, like a wide open door in a warm climate. However, the oak is raw and strong and sits on top like a heavy overcoat. Because of its provenance, this is an interesting wine to try but it doesn’t taste as good as a £20 wine can so ticks the curiosity not the value box. Bolt-on expertise courtesy of international winemakers, and money to spend on technology mean that China’s wines have been able to advance in remarkably rapid bounds. It’s the right terroir that is the pot of gold at the end of the wine rainbow. Without it, you can make decent wine but it will always be generic, just-another-wine, never special, always missing something. You have to be very lucky to alight on the right grape for the right place straight away. Or you have to have a lot of people in a lot of places toiling away very hard to identify it. No one would bet on China not to have a good go at finding it. Buy wine from around the world from Telegraph Wine