Actress Maggie Cheung was signed on for an ad campaign with Suntime Winery, which makes wine in the far reaches of the Gobi Desert

Throughout China, winemaking is still in its tricky adolescence. The booming economy and changing Chinese tastes have rapidly increased the demand for local wines. Today, there are an estimated 400 wineries in China, though the numbers are unreliable, and only 100 at most are serious producers of grape-based wine. Most Chinese wine is produced by state-owned corporations that value volume far more than quality. Still, a handful of quality producers like Huadong are trying to change that outlook. And as the Chinese learn more about wine and begin looking for better bottles, Chinese wine may enter maturity.
 
The Chinese were making wine by 212 B.C., according to archaeological evidence, and commercial wineries have existed since the end of the 19th century. But it wasn't until the economy opened up in the 1980s that serious production began. Early wineries were joint ventures between foreign wine corporations, including Remy Cointreau and Seagram, and state-owned companies. The foreign partners brought European vine cuttings and modem equipment into the country.
 
Today, Remy still owns 24 percent of large producer Dynasty Wines, but the Chinese are increasingly taking the lead at their wineries. In 1987, Frenchman Pierre Delair took charge of winemaking at Dynasty, leaving that post in 1998. Since then, winemaking has been supervised by Wang Shusheng, who has been at Dynasty since 1991 and has worked in wine production for two decades. Production has grown from approximately 3,000 cases in 1980 to 3.3 million cases last year.

Parry probably would have approved of the current energetic leadership at his Huadong. The vice general manager there today, Liu Hong Mei, received her MBA from Cardiff University in Wales, while winemaker Gloria Xia learned her craft from a succession of Aussie consultants brought in at crush time.

"Huadong is not the biggest winery, but I think it is the best, because of the quality," says Liu. "A lot of the wineries have no grape base, they import wine from overseas and then bottle it. Our selling point is quality, that our wine is a high-class product."
 
The other high-end producers tend to be based on dreams similar to Parry's. Grace Vineyard, generally agreed to be the home of China's best reds, was founded in 1997 by C.K. Chan, a Chinese-Indonesian businessman with a passion for wine and a determination to produce vintages worthy of his homeland's rich history. To do that though, he needed outside help, seeking advice from his French friend Sylvain Janvier on what the best locations were, and hiring Bordeaux native Gerard Colin as chief winemaker.
 
Chan built his winery on a plateau near the Yellow River in Shanxi province, southwest of Beijing. Most of China's wineries and vineyards are located in two areas: the fertile Yellow River Valley provinces south and west of Beijing, including Shandong, Shanxi and Hebei, and the coastal provinces east of the capital. Other producers are exploring more arid sites such as Inner Mongolia and the desert oases in western China).

                    The dry climate od the Gobi region helps to promote healthy grapes                                                 at harvesttime at vineyard oases.
 
At Grace, Colin now oversees a production of about 17,000 cases a year for the mass market and 25,000 cases of premium wine; varietals include Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. He works hard to keep standards high and to teach local grape farmers what those standards mean. "For me, there are two ways to make wine: like any other industry, or with feeling,'' he says. "To do it with feeling, you need to have a team that understands what you are trying to do."
 
But not all of China's winemakers have Colin's exacting standards. The wine industry is young, demand is growing rapidly and production regulations are almost nonexistent. That can lead to wines that are good, bad or just plain ugly.
 
When is a Chinese wine not Chinese ? It sounds like a question worthy of Lao Tze or Chuang Tzu, the ancient Taoist sages. But a good portion of wines labeled as Chinese contain only a small amount of Chinese wine; most are made by blending imported bulk wine, the majority of it from Chile,  with Chinese wine. Quality is often suspect; not only are many of these wines blended with foreign bulk wines, some are mixed with fruit juice or water.
 
Most Chinese wine is red and cheap, meant to be slugged back or mixed with other beverages. Until recently, it was common to find Chinese wine on store shelves packaged with, or even simply taped to, a bottle of Sprite or tonic water. Other wines are placed in elaborate gift boxes, with a corkscrew, two glasses and a satin pillow for the wine to be presented on. Wine is a popular present, and these boxes are often re-gifted several times. Imported wines are popular with the nouveau riche in China's cities, but most Chinese wines are bought by people further down the income ladder, usually for special occasions like New Year's. Sometimes bottles are displayed on a kitchen shelf, where they will remain for years as symbols of their owner's sophistication.
 
Four big, state-owned companies Dynasty, Changyu, Great Wall and Tonghua dominate the industry, controlling an estimated two-thirds of the market. The big producers tend to focus on certain market segments. Tonghua and China Red are popular in northeastern cities; Dynasty sells well in Shanghai. Great Wall and Qingdao target young adults, while Duke Dry Wine aims for middle-aged drinkers. Great Wall is popular with Chinese who have lower incomes. Actually, three different wines are named Great Wall; they're made by three different branches of a state-owned food conglomerate, which are supposed to be allied and focused on different market areas, but which in reality compete with each other.
 
Despite the "anything goes" mentality toward winemaking, one state-owned producer is trying to prove that quality Chinese wine can be made in large volume. The founders of Suntime Winery picked an unlikely place to do it, halfway across Asia, on the far side of the Gobi Desert.
 
Much of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which is closer to the Afghan capital of Kabul than to Beijing, lies in the forbiddingly expansive Gobi and Taklamakan deserts. But the region has been renowned for its table-grape production since the days the old Silk Road ran through it, and is home to the independent Lou Lan Winery, which made much-admired Cabernet Sauvignon under the supervision of now-departed Frenchman Gregory Michel.
 
The aim of Suntime is pretty straightforward: Make quality bulk wines with China-grown grapes, using modern viticulture and equipment. To do that, it has spent $175 million on building winemaking facilities at four spots in the remote desert region and has channeled water from the melting snow and ice of the majestic Tian Shan mountain range into a sophisticated irrigation system. That a government-owned company is willing to invest such a huge sum shows how much potential the Chinese think wine production has.
 
Supervising the project is Yang Huafeng, an affable individual not remotely fazed by the scale of the task at hand. Just 34, he is well-educated, fully at ease with visitors from afar and able to deliver rapid fire answers in impeccable English. Yang has used his training as a biochemist in Beijing and years of experience working in the field with Dragon Seal wines, located close to the capital, to get Suntime off the ground. Educating local farmers on the whys and wherefores of modem viticulture is a key part of the mission. Those who adapt to Suntime's recommended methods and meet their requirements are offered expert advice on planting, pruning and irrigation and given a higher price for their grapes.
 
Once the Xinjiang production facilities were up and running to his satisfaction, Yang turned his attention to the marketing side of the operation. The company recently signed on Cannes Film Festival Award-winning actress Maggie Cheung as a promotional face. Suntime has great potential but will need to start making a profit quickly to justify its huge investments.
 
Yang, who is committed to a lifetime career in the wine industry, is looking much further into the future, to a day when China's new prosperity will have spread to even poor rural Chinese who might then be able to afford a bottle of red wine with dinner. "This is the beginning of wine in China, and there is huge potential," says Yang. "Only a few consumers really know wine, but this will quickly change. It is part of the new lifestyle, as people's incomes increase."