Western missionaries brought grapes and wine to China along with their Bibles as they did in so many other countries.
"People expect very good wines onboard, " he said, highlighting growing interest in wine in China and the enduring popularity of wines from France's Bordeaux region.
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Both foreign traders and local producers have in recent months observed a spectacular rise in the popularity of wine in China, at least in the country's more prosperous and cosmopolitan cities and coastal regions.
Comparative wine production statistics for China are a bit problematic because much of the wine produced is not pure grape wine but may be mixed-fruit wine, and the rules on what can be labeled Chinese wine are quite, er, flexible.
Any more thoughts on how bad China wine is now and how it will evolve?
But wine imported into China came predominantly from France, and he spotted a market opportunity for Californian wines.
Mr. Yao's appreciation for wine grew in parallel with its acceptance in his home country wine consumption in China doubled from 2005 to 2009.
"As the leading wine importer in China, we need to keep up good relations with the government, and as the government owns some of these wineries, we cannot be seen as criticizing them, " explains Don St.
Wine has a long history in China, reaching back more than 2, 000 years to the first wine imported from Ferghana in what is now Uzbekistan.
For less mature wine markets where the growth started in the mid-1990s, such as China, it was red wine that led the way.
Mr. Hinde insists Yao Family Wines isn't a short-lived bid to capitalize on China's wine boom and the star's celebrity before either of them wane.
Not surprising, then, that counterfeit wine has popped up in China.
China's wine production is relatively small but growing--730 million liters in 2005 compared with 2, 546 million liters for the U.S. and 898 million liters for Germany.
Richard Halstead, co-founder of Wine Intelligence, a consultancy on wine branding, says that China is a huge growth market for producers and there is a scramble for quality European brands.
For a fee, these businesses have been offering stressed out customers the opportunity to bundle up in safety gear, choose fragile objects like china plates and wine glasses and then literally chuck them against walls.
Armed with a map of China's wine regions and an open mind, I trotted off to the tasting, which by coincidence landed on the vernal equinox an appropriate time to challenge my taste buds and try something new.
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China had about 450 wine producers at last count, which is fewer than in Washington State.
China has been producing wine of one sort or another since the early days of the Tang Dynasty (around 625).
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First, COFCO is in the wine business and has national distribution in China with its Great Wall brand.
He travelled around the country and to China, made his own wine, ground his own grain, and drove a gray Volkswagen bug.
His first venture was selling medical equipment, before switching to trading precious metals, as well as wine, when demand for that commodity boomed in China.
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There are chemical traces inside 9, 000-year-old pottery from Northern China that indicates that it was a wine drink made from rice, grapes, hawthorn and honey and wooly mammoth.
Hong Kong's Oriental Daily News says the public are justifiably concerned that yet another round of streamlining could just be "new wine in old bottles" and fail to curb China's bloated bureaucracy.
As he returned to the China Club for a last cup of rice wine, Chang and his friends seemed like genteel revolutionaries ready to take on the modern world.
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In China, where the style of mixing red wine with Coke has only recently fallen out of favor, counterfeiters usually go even cheaper, adding loads of sugar to domestic wines or, in some cases, adding sugar to grape juice imported in bulk.
"China represents effectively the biggest growth prospect that the wine industry has had probably for a generation, " said Halstead.
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