Viticulture in China
Viticulture in China has been practiced in various forms for around 4600 years. The grape wine, known in China as grape alcohol ( Chinese 葡萄酒 , Pinyin Pútáojiǔ ), however, had to eke out a niche existence alongside the more popular rice wine for a long time . Viticulture has recently been intensified, and the country's wine producers now produce over 9.1 million hectoliters per year (as of 2018). In an international comparison, this is the tenth largest value. In 2014 it was forecast that the People's Republic of China would be the largest wine market in the world in 2020.
history
The oldest wine-like substance found in what is now the national territory comes from the Neolithic Jiahu excavation site in Henan Province . Researchers dated vessels in which chemical methods were used to identify residues of grape wine as well as residues of a fermented rice-honey mixture to around 7,000 years before Christ. This makes the find the oldest evidence of the production and consumption of wine by humans.
A find made near Rizhao in 1995 , which is estimated to be 2600 years old, as well as a find in the approximately 3000 year old grave of a nobleman of the Zhou dynasty near Baoji are among the most important in the history of wine.
There is written evidence of viticulture at the time of the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century. About five centuries later, the Asian traveler Marco Polo reported an excellent wine from the Taiyuan area . The grape wine, which with the emerging popularity of fruit wines, produced e.g. B. from lychee , had to fight for its position among the Chinese beverages, disappeared completely from the beverage spectrum of China at times when the cultivation was banned in the 14th century. The cultivated areas were converted into grain fields, as these were of greater value as food.
With the introduction of European vines in the 19th century, the now insignificant wine culture in China received new impulses. The diplomat Zhang Bishi did pioneering work when he founded a winery in Yantai in 1892 , which still exists today under the name Changyu and is the oldest in China.
Today's production
Today China is one of the most ambitious climbers in the international wine landscape, in hardly any other country is the expansion of wine growing practiced as intensively as in China, also thanks to the support of the government. At the beginning of the boom, Chinese wines were among the cheap mass-produced wines, but recently they have also been popular with connoisseurs.
The recovery was initiated in part by the expertise of European experts. Individual companies entered the Chinese market, in 2009 Château Lafite-Rothschild caused a sensation with the plan to build a copy of the original French winery in Penglai . The wines should initially only be 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 and together they generate over 40% of China's total production.
Mainly red grape varieties are grown in China . Resounding success is forecast for the Marselan grape in particular .
Controversy
Around 90% of the production declared as domestic is sold domestically. However, some of the wines only appear to come from China itself. It is sometimes common to buy in wines from abroad and add them to Chinese production.
In 2010, a television report made it public that 30 wine producers from Hebei Province had systematically stretched and mislabelled wine. The authorities responded by closing the factories.
Growing areas
The center of Chinese viticulture is the Bohai region in the Shandong province on the east coast of China, but viticulture is also practiced in other areas of China. The area around Gaochang in the Uyghur Autonomous Region Xinjiang , the area around Zhangjiakou in the Hebei Province east of Beijing , the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau and the north of Ningxia around Yinchuan and parts of Gansu are to be emphasized . In some cases, viticulture is restricted by climatic conditions. B. in the northeast Chinese Manchuria around the city of Tonghua . Only varieties that are ready for frost can be grown there.
Individual evidence
- ↑ German Wine Statistics 2019/2020
- ↑ Johnny Erling: How a German brought China wine and prosperity. welt.de, July 3, 2014, accessed on July 3, 2014
- ↑ Roger Highfield: China was drinking wine 9000 years ago. The Telegraph, December 7, 2004, accessed July 22, 2015
- ↑ Hints of 9,000-years-old wine found in China. NBC News , July 12, 2004, accessed July 22, 2015
- ↑ a b c Joel B. Payne: China: Wein als Chance , Falstaff , August 2011, accessed on November 29, 2013
- ↑ Lucy Shaw: 3,000-year-old wine unearthed in China. The Drinks Business, July 9, 2012, accessed July 22, 2015
- ↑ China and its wine regions, ernestopauli.ch
- ^ Inna Hartwich: In the Empire of the Vine , Berliner Zeitung Online from November 24, 2013, accessed on November 29, 2013
- ↑ a b A French winery - in the middle of China , Spiegel Online from November 3, 2013, accessed on November 29, 2013
- ↑ a b Carsten Dierig: Chinese winemakers are storming Europe's wine market , Welt.de from March 26, 2012, accessed on December 16, 2013
- ↑ a b Chateau China ( Memento from December 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), Swiss Wine Newspaper from March 2011, accessed on November 29, 2013 (PDF)
- ↑ Marselan grape variety before the breakthrough in China Vinaria on June 13, 2016