Introduction

Wine & Co Consultancy, a local wine school that does WSET courses, called upon some of its alums to join them in tasting wines from the Chinese "leaderboard" to see how the quality has progressed. I had the odd bottle of China made red wine here and was always underwhelmed. So, a good opportunity to taste them blind in a structured format.

I'd summarize the situation as follows:
- On the top end the wines have moved a little bit in quality but are still far below from what I think any connoisseur is likely to buy. As a matter of fact, no one in the room really liked any of the bottles.
- Don't get me wrong, the wines are correctly made, resembling 10$ supermarket bottles, simple but correct (think Jellow Tail / Jacob's Creek). Tannins are polished but the wines are very, very oaky and feel sweet on the palate, I even thought there was some RS in them. We heard from a HK sales rep of Chinese wines that this oaky/sweet style is deliberate as the local taste is looking for this... Outch!
- To be fair, since growing wine in a new place is a game of study, trial and error, study some more, try some more, improvements will slowly but surely happen. Also one needs to consider that even in the best Vineyards there are no old vines yet, another ingredient necessary for high quality.
- Finally, to most buyer's dismay, the top names are already 200$, which is of course far too much for what's in the bottle. So if you are buying these wines, the rationale should therefore not be gastronomic, but either speculative (if you are into that) or to surprise your guests with a blind sample from the "Newest World".

Flight 1 (7 notes)

Flight 2 - Chinese wines tasted on other occasions (3 notes)