Wine in China
Viticulture in China is operated in different forms since about 4600 years. The grape wine, grape liquor in China (Chinese葡萄酒, Pinyin Pútáojiǔ ) called, but had long periods in addition to the more popular rice wine a niche. More recently, the viticulture was intensified, the wine producers in the country today produce about 13 million hectoliters per year ( as of 2010). In international comparison, this is the sixth largest value.
History
The oldest wine-like substance that was found on the territory of today, comes from the province of Henan. Researchers dated the 200 clay pots, in which in addition to residues of grape wine also remains of a fermented rice -honey mixture were, 2600 years before Christ. This makes the 1995 Fund made near Rizhao to the oldest in the history of the wine.
Written viticulture is witnessed during the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century. About five centuries later reported the Asian traveler Marco Polo by a delicious wine from the area around Taiyuan. The grape wine, for example with the rising popularity of fruit wines, made from lychee to had to his position among Chinese drinks struggling disappeared at times completely out of the range of beverages to China when it was banned in the 14th century, the cultivation. The acreage being converted to crop fields, as these had a greater value as food.
With the introduction of European vines in the 19th century had become insignificant wine culture in China experienced a new impetus. The diplomat Zhang Bishi thus made pioneering work, as in 1892 he founded a winery in Yantai, which is under the name Changyu today and is the oldest in China.
Today's production
Today, China is one of the most ambitious social climbers in the international wine landscape, in almost any other country is the expansion of viticulture as intense as operated in China, also thanks to the support of the government. Heard Chinese wines at the beginning of the upswing to the cheap mass wines, so you can find recently favored even among connoisseurs.
The upswing was partly initiated by knowledge of European experts. Some companies went into the Chinese market, in 2009 attracted Château Lafite -Rothschild with the project to build a replica of the French master winery in Penglai, stir. The wines should be initially produced for the Chinese market.
The largest of the approximately 600 wine producers are Great Wall, Dynasty, Changyu and Grand Dragon. The first three are state- owned, together they produce over 40% of China's total production.
In China, red grapes are primarily grown.
Controversies
Approximately 90 % of the declared as indigenous production is sold domestically. However, the wine comes in part only in appearance from China itself, it is sometimes customary to zuzukaufen wines from abroad and to mix the Chinese production.
2010 became public through a television report that had 30 wine producers in Hebei Province wine systematically stretched and mislabeled. The authorities responded to the closure of establishments.
Growing areas
The center of Chinese viticulture, the Bohai Region in Shandong Province on the east coast of China is, but also in other parts of China wine is cultivated. These here are the area around Turfan in the Uighur region of Xinjiang, the region around Zhangjiakou in Hebei province east of Beijing, the North Eastern Chinese Manchuria with Tonghua City and the north Ningxias to Yinchuan and parts of Gansu.