Title: Inside the Chinese Wine Industry
Author: Loren Mayshark
Genre: Nonfiction
The wine
business is one of the world’s most fascinating industries and China is
considered the rising star. A hidden secret, the Chinese wine industry
continues to grow at an amazing pace and is projected to soon enter the top
five producing nations, supplanting long established countries such as
Australia. Inside the Chinese Wine Industry: The Past, Present, and Future
of Wine in China takes you through the growing Chinese wine scene.
Wine has had a meteoric rise in China over the past two decades. The nation is projected to become the second most valuable market for wine in the world by 2020. One recent study concluded that 96% of young Chinese adults consider wine their alcoholic drink of choice. Not only does Inside the Chinese Wine Industry explore current expansion and business models, it journeys back to the past to see where it all began.
There
are more than seven hundred wineries in China today. Although it’s bit of an
oversimplification, the vast majority of the wineries fit into one of two categories:
the larger established producers who churn out mostly plonk to meet the growing
demand for inexpensive wine and the newer wineries that try to cater to the
tastes of the wealthy Chinese with money to spend on luxury goods like fine
wine. In the words of wine guru Karen MacNeil, author of The Wine Bible, “The cheap wines from the very large producers have
mostly verged on dismal.” However, this should not be considered a blanket
statement regarding every wine from large producers. Also, she has positive
reflections regarding the level of wine produced by “cutting-edge wineries”
which she finds “far better.” How good are they? MacNeil asserts: “Some of
these wines are so good they could easily pass for a California or Bordeaux
wine in a blind tasting.”
Author Bio
Loren Mayshark studied
Chinese art, religion, philosophy, and history while earning a B.A. in history
from Manhattanville College in New York. After graduation, he attended
The Gotham Writers Workshop and the prestigious New York Writers Workshop. He
has written about the Chinese wine industry for The Jovial Journey and Sublime
China.
After college, he supported his itinerant
lifestyle by working dozens of jobs, including golf caddy, travel writer,
construction worker, fireworks salesman, substitute teacher, and vineyard
laborer. Predominantly his jobs have been in the restaurant industry. He cut
his teeth as a server, maître d’, and bartender at San Francisco’s historic
Fisherman’s Grotto #9, the original restaurant on the Fisherman’s Wharf. While
working with a colorful crew of primarily Mexican and Chinese co-workers.
He spent much of his young adult life exploring the wine industry from Sonoma Valley to the
North Fork of Long Island, immersing himself in vineyards and learning valuable
lessons. He has
traveled extensively in South America, Europe, and Asia. He presently
splits his time between Western New York and Sweden.
His first book, Death: An Exploration, won the 2016
Beverly Hills Book Award in the category of Death and Dying and was a finalist
for book of the year in the 2016 Foreword INDIES Awards in the category of
Grief/Grieving (Adult Nonfiction). Inside
the
Chinese Wine Industry
is his third book.
For more information visit his website:
lorenmayshark.com.
Keep up with him on Twitter: @LorenMayshark
Links
Twitter: https://bit.ly/2JgrXQy
Author Website
Bookpage: http://bit.ly/LmaysharkWB
Promos
CHAPTER I:
Introduction
F
|
ew things signal
civilization and sophistication more than enjoying a fine wine with an
excellent meal. It may be asserted that China is the world’s oldest continuous civilization.
One of the features of its culture is that Chinese cuisine serves up superb
meals. Until recently, however, fine wines have been absent there, at least
wine made from the noble grape.
In many ways, we live
in a golden age for wine. The wine world has many exciting new wrinkles from
fancy new mobile applications to devices that allow us to extract a glass of
wine from a bottle and then return it to the cellar to rest for a couple of
years without changing the character of the wine. With all the current trends
and innovations, it is the best time to enjoy wine. This is certainly a special
age, in the words of renowned wine critic Jancis Robinson: “The irony is that
just as the difference in price between the best and worst wines is greater
than it has ever been, the difference in quality is narrower than ever before.”[1] Perhaps one of the most pervasive reasons for
this truism, which Robinson so eloquently captured, is the globalization of the
wine industry. One cannot fully understand the global wine industry of today
without developing a deeper understanding of its largest and fastest growing
player: China.
Though starting
relatively late historically with grape wine production and consumption, China
has been catching up quickly. China’s role in the global wine industry
continues to grow at an astonishing pace. Wine consumption in China doubled
between 2008 and 2013 when China became the fifth largest consumer of wine in
the world. At the end of 2013, China became the world’s largest market for red
wine, and China is projected to become the second most valuable market for wine
in the world by 2020 (behind the U.S.), which will have a profound impact on
various aspects of the global wine industry.[2] These are significant statistics for anyone
who has a serious interest in the global wine industry.
To feed the rapidly
rising consumption, the domestic production in China has also increased at an
amazing rate. China now has more than seven hundred vineyards, compared to 240
in 1995.[3] As of 2018, China is projected to have the
second largest area of wine grapes planted in the world and to be the seventh
largest producer of wine.[4]
While wine has deep
roots in Western culture, China has a rich history of wine production which
dates back to millennia before Christ. However, it must be stressed that this
tradition is almost exclusively rice wine. The production and mass consumption
of grape wine is a recent phenomenon in China. A 2015 poll found that 96
percent of young adults in China select wine as their favored alcoholic
beverage.[5] This book examines the development of the
Chinese wine industry in a historical context and explains how the Chinese
grape wine industry has exploded in the last two decades. We will explore the
fascination with European Grapes in China and the explosion of the import and
consumption of Vitis vinifera (the
most important wine-grape species in the world) in China and the historical
precedent for that. We will attempt to answer burning questions such as: What
changed to make China wine-crazy? How can a tourist enjoy unique wine
experiences in China? Why is mass wine production and consumption a modern
phenomenon? Why are there not a lot of Chinese wines exported to the United
States and Europe?
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