Moët Produces Bordeaux Blend in China's Shangri-La
The real Shangri-La moves into wine.
Moët Hennessy is about to release its first Chinese wine in an "extraordinary project" in the Chinese city of Shangri-La.
The wine, a Cabernet-Merlot blend, is made from 74 acres (30ha) of vineyard in a "very, very remote part of China", Jean-Guillaume Prats, president of Moët Hennessy Estates & Wines told Wine Searcher.
As well as being the fictional earthly paradise as described by James
Hilton in his 1933 novel "Lost Horizon", Shangri-La is a town in the
Chinese province of Yunnan, close to the Tibetan border, in 1.7m hectares of UNESCO-protected wilderness.
Here the Chinese Baiju producer VATS makes wine from 741 acres (300ha) of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, some of it dating back to 1992 and made into wine bottled under the Shangri-La label. The vines, originally planted by the local government as a way of diversifying agricultural output – mainly barley and mushrooms is farmed as smallholdings by local villagers.
Moët-Hennessy has leased a portion of these vineyards, built a winery nearby, and intends to plant more vines within the next few months. The government prohibits foreign ownership of vineyards in this part of China, Prats says.
The terroir, mainly of "deep gravel, similar to the Medoc", is on the 27th parallel, the same latitude as Morocco, and has what Prats calls "extraordinary properties – it has intense acidity, its balanced and refreshing – there is such a purity to it".
The vineyards, in plots of an average size of one-tenth of an acre, sit between 2300 and 2600 meters (7500-8500 feet). The high altitude and "intense light" plays a significant role in the "quality of the skins, and the tannins" of the grapes, which are small, with thick skins and "exceptional freshness".
The ripening period is extended, with some 170 days between flowering and harvest, and there is extreme diurnal variation, with temperatures plunging form 30-35 degrees in the day to five degrees and below at night.
The wine will be released in the US and UK in October 2015, and in China in 2016. The price has not been decided yet, Prats says, "but it will be expensive".
The wine, a Cabernet-Merlot blend, is made from 74 acres (30ha) of vineyard in a "very, very remote part of China", Jean-Guillaume Prats, president of Moët Hennessy Estates & Wines told Wine Searcher.
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Here the Chinese Baiju producer VATS makes wine from 741 acres (300ha) of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, some of it dating back to 1992 and made into wine bottled under the Shangri-La label. The vines, originally planted by the local government as a way of diversifying agricultural output – mainly barley and mushrooms is farmed as smallholdings by local villagers.
Moët-Hennessy has leased a portion of these vineyards, built a winery nearby, and intends to plant more vines within the next few months. The government prohibits foreign ownership of vineyards in this part of China, Prats says.
The terroir, mainly of "deep gravel, similar to the Medoc", is on the 27th parallel, the same latitude as Morocco, and has what Prats calls "extraordinary properties – it has intense acidity, its balanced and refreshing – there is such a purity to it".
The vineyards, in plots of an average size of one-tenth of an acre, sit between 2300 and 2600 meters (7500-8500 feet). The high altitude and "intense light" plays a significant role in the "quality of the skins, and the tannins" of the grapes, which are small, with thick skins and "exceptional freshness".
The ripening period is extended, with some 170 days between flowering and harvest, and there is extreme diurnal variation, with temperatures plunging form 30-35 degrees in the day to five degrees and below at night.
The wine will be released in the US and UK in October 2015, and in China in 2016. The price has not been decided yet, Prats says, "but it will be expensive".
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