Experts who taste wine from the Silver Heights estate usually nod with approval, expressing surprise that a small winery in Ningxia province can produce such a smooth drop. When they discover who the winemaker is - a young Chinese woman little known in the industry - they are amazed.

Emma Gao Yuan, one of the few female winemakers on the mainland, is creating French-style reds that are on the wine lists of five-star Aman resorts in China, alongside grand crus such as the 1982 Chateau Lafite, priced at HK$66,000.

"I had heard of Emma Gao, so I ordered the wine to try and was very impressed," says Crystal Edgar, cellar master for Aman resorts in Asia. "I think it has incredible potential; the wines have depth and complexity, real structure, balance and muscle."

Little Emma and her cousin help harvest the grapes at Silver Heights estate

Making the Aman wine list is no small feat for a fledgling producer. The only other Chinese wines offered at the group's luxury retreats in Beijing and Hangzhou are from the Hong Kong-owned Grace Vineyard, the long-established Changyu Castel and an ice wine from Golden Valley Vineyards.

Wine is becoming an increasingly popular tipple on the mainland, especially among the newly-affluent younger generation. Wine-industry group Vinexpo - which is holding its Asia-Pacific expo in Hong Kong this week - says consumption of imported wines is growing at 65 per cent a year, and in three years, some 17 million cases will be imported annually.

"In terms of overall growth in demand for wine in China over the next 10 years, China will become both a massive producer and a massive importer of wine," says Don St Pierre, head of ASC, the wine importer and distributor recently acquired by Japanese drinks giant Suntory.

In the grand scheme of mainland wine production, Gao's operation is modest, but of the more than 400 wineries scattered across the nation, Silver Heights produces some of the very best wine.

But it comes with major sacrifices for Gao. She is separated for long stretches from her husband, Thierry Courtade, and five-year-old daughter, also called Emma. Both live in France, where Courtade is the winemaker at Chateau Calon Segur.

Grapes being sorted at Silver Heights estate

"I miss her very much," says Gao of her daughter. "She is tough, the same character as me! We talk via webcam and I go to France at least once a year to visit and spend two or three months with her ... we paint, read, cook and play together.

"I am used to the simple life here on the vineyard. I grew up with no television and only went out once a week. But I do love to go to Shanghai and Beijing to meet people."

For Gao, winemaking has become a passion, but it was a career path that came about by chance. The local government, keen for locals to learn more about wine production, targeted three people for crash-course training at the world-renowned wine college in Bordeaux, France. French-speaking Gao's role with the delegation was primarily as a translator, but she became intrigued by winemaking and decided to stay on for further study.

"My father encouraged me to go and learn the technical side of winemaking," recalls Gao, 33. "He worked in administration with a state winery and told me that our region has the potential to produce good wine. After studying in France for six months, I hadn't learned very much but wanted to go back to study more."

Gao applied to study at the Ecole d'Oenologie in Bordeaux; there were 300 candidates for 30 places that year, she says, but she was accepted.

"During the vacations I stayed in France and did an internship in a chateau. I really wanted to understand. I did all kinds of work, even inside the tanks. It was very tough work ... the smell of alcohol can be overpowering at times."

On her return to China six years ago, Gao worked as a freelance winemaker before joining Torres, the Spanish producer-distributor, to learn the business side of winemaking.

During that time, Gao and her father developed the Silver Heights estate and made their first wine, which they hesitantly offered to Torres executives Alberto Fernandez and Damien Shee for tasting. "She asked us if we would like to try the wine and when we did it was fantastic. I believe it is one of the top wines in China," says Shee. "We realised this was a serious winemaker who we should encourage. We helped her with the labelling, packaging and distribution. The wine promotes itself... wait until 2008 vintage is released, there is just one word to describe it - amazing."

Buoyed by her bosses' praise, Gao left the company to concentrate on her own wines. Torres now distributes the two Silver Heights wines, as it does for Grace Vineyard, another independent winery known for the quality of its wines.

Even the boutique, Hong Kong-owned Grace is a large operation compared with Silver Heights. The vines occupy just two hectares of land on the slopes of Mount Helan; initial production was in one tank, which allowed production of only 3,000 bottles for the first two vintages. The addition of a second fermenting tank has allowed production of 6,000 bottles for the 2008 vintage.

Silver Heights makes just two red wines, both a blend of cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and cabernet germischt grapes; the terroir where they are grown leads to different characteristics. The Summit, which sells for HK$350 a bottle, is made from grapes grown on slate-like earth with some clay, while grapes for the Family Reserve, which retails at HK$230, are sourced from vines near a river, where the ground is stonier.

The Summit is a favourite of Aman's cellar master. "We showcased this wine, among a few other local wines, to several top wine producers from California and they were impressed," says Edgar.

The province of Ningxia is hardly renowned for winemaking - the Shandong peninsula is home to most major wineries - but the region around Silver Heights has the right conditions and climate for making top-notch reds. "We are surrounded by mountains, which break the wind and stop the erosion," says Gao. "We also get a regular supply of water for irrigation from the melting snow and 3,200 hours of sunshine a year.

"At the winery we do everything ourselves. Me and my father look after the wines, my mother is the analyst and my sister is the accountant. We do almost everything by hand ... bottling and labelling.

"My ambition is perhaps to buy another vineyard; we are looking for investors but we are not in a hurry. They have to be investors who love wine. I would like to be a consultant for many wineries in China and help raise the standard of wine here."

No land of Lafite, but it's still early days

While the quality of China-made wine, and the range of imported options, has improved enormously in recent years, it remains at a dismally low level.

Vague regulations on content labelling often make it difficult to establish the provenance of locally made wines, while imported bottles are subject to swinging tax rates. Nonetheless, there is general industry agreement that the future looks bright: among the major wine-world names taking the market seriously is the renowned DBR Chateau Lafite, which has set up a winery with the mainland investment arm, Citic.

The winery is near the town of Penglai, on the Shandong peninsula, a region that hosts almost 50 wineries. The highly rated Grace Vineyard lies further west, in Shanxi province, with Silver Heights winery in the even farther-flung Ningxia province.

"It is still very early days - the industry is undergoing amazing growth," says Hong Kong-raised Marcus Ford, who runs an upmarket wine bar and retail outlet, Pudao, the Wine Way, in Shanghai. "There is a lot more competition, lots of opportunities and lots of challenges. People in China are experimenting more.

"There is tons of rubbish out there. Good progress has been made by people like Emma Gao, and Grace Vineyard, who have invested in quality, but a lot of Chinese wine is still pretty poor and poorly regulated."
 

Copyright is owned by Chinese Wines Information Website.If you want to reproduce this article,please contact (info@wines-info.com)and attach the source and author's name.