Upon entering the superb patio that marks the entrance to Xige Estate, one of the largest vineyards in the Ningxia region, the visitor cannot miss Xi Jinping’s quote inscribed in elegant black characters on a white background: “Ningxia viticulture is a microcosm of Chinese viticulture. To know it is to know Chinese viticulture. In due time, perhaps ten or twenty years from now, Chinese wine will amaze the world. » President’s speech.
Zhang Yanzhi, owner of Ningxia Xige Estate, a brand new 2,000 hectare estate, loves this quote so much that he named one of his bottles “609, tribute to Xi Jinping”. Pronounced on June 9, 2020, during a trip to this small province in the north of the country, the presidential sentence is worth gold. Since then, a miracle of the managed economy, the authorities and bankers have had Chimene’s eyes for the region’s vine professionals.
“At the start, we received a lot of local help. But, since Xi’s visit, we also have national aid.testifies Christelle Chêne, ambassador of world brands and director of international affairs of Ningxia Xige Estate. “When you invest in the vineyard, the authorities provide you with water, roads, electricity and irrigation”confirms Nicolas Billot-Grima, managing director of Stone & Moon, another recent 55-hectare estate, owned by a wealthy family from Shaanxi, a neighboring region.
Vines buried in winter
Long dependent on coal, Ningxia, a small province crossed by the Yellow River, is now relying on vines and ecotourism to convert. Benefiting from a dry and sunny climate, protected from the north winds by a chain of mountains, the vineyards of Ningxia which extend over 35,000 hectares (roughly the surface of Burgundy) are not lacking in assets. With this detail that the freezing temperatures in winter force winegrowers to perform a unique exercise in the world: digging up stony soil to bury the vines in each cold season in order to protect them from frost. A doubly costly constraint: not only do winegrowers need an abundance of labor in winter, but the vines, weakened, live twice shorter than in France.
The price of wine suffers. A Ningxia red, correct without being dazzling, easily reaches 100 euros a bottle. Despite everything, the local authorities, supported by Xi Jinping, hope to triple the surface of the vineyard by 2035, thus increasing it to 110,000 hectares, and allowing it to achieve a turnover of around 4 billion dollars. That is about a third of the turnover of wine in France. It is also a means of providing work for an abundant rural labor force that is often unskilled.
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