do they make other, stronger alcoholic beverages in xinjiang or are they all imported?

Well, there are baijiu distilleries located everywhere in China I think, including Xinjiang. That Suntime winery that I mentioned above also makes a grappa-like beverage which it calls "West Region Strong Spirit" (西域烈焰葡萄烈酒).

As of earlier this year I heard the French partner is no longer involved in Les Champs D'or. Is this not correct? With a supermarket shelf price of over 300 RMB per bottle I find their top end wine considerably overpriced. At that kind of pricepoint you can get some excellent French, Chilean, or Australian wines. The Yizhu ice wine however is a real bargin if ice wine is to your taste. Very difficult to find outside of Xinjiang it seems.

I'm not sure about whether or not the French are still involved in Les Champs D'or. It's true that their top-priced wine is overpriced, but they also have good bottles in the Y120 range, which can be had for about Y70 at their company store. Not sure if these mid-priced options are widespread in China or only here in Xinjiang.

Funny thing is that I was not familiar with the wines out in your area because all I had ever seen (in the Qingdao, Dalian, Yantai, Beijing, and Shanghai areas) was wine from Shandong. Changyu and Great Wall are the two most common higher end wines in the East of China. They are a decent wines (not that I am any expert), certainly better than Kool-aid and since anything (including gasoline) is better than baiju ....

You guys are wimps, baijiu isn't thaat bad...

How is baijiu not that bad? I've had to sit through too many forced baijiu drinkings by now to think of it as anything less than a personal enemy. I'll admit that the first time I got tanked on it I though it was OK... but after you've puked it and tasted it for the second time, experienced the awful headache, and seen what it does to the health of many a rich Chinese businessman... well, all I can say is that I'm against it, and that's final.

Do they export this wine as well? What will be the appr.price )without local taxes.

Hello,

I just saw two little films in French (about 58 minutes each) about the French owners of Les Champs d'Or.

In fact, a TV-team followed the French owners in China. It was about investment and management
purposes.

Regards,
Christophe

Christophe:

Any way you can give me the name or production company of that French film? I'd love to see it.

Michael

The name of the show is striptease. Available on DVD in France but not easily found.
A torrent of the documentary about les Champs d'Or just appeared 2 days ago here
(http://www.smartorrent.com/?page=torrentinfo&tid=23166)
you need to register to have the link working but these 90mns of show are worth it. Interesting to see how business is dealt in China

Thanks, I've registered and am downloading now.

Reds from China start to impress
Colleen Ryan URUMQI
9 December 2006
Australian Financial Review

Australian winemakers ignore this fledgling rival at their peril, say those who've glimpsed its workings.

It is the biggest winery in Asia, tucked away in China's far western province of Xinjiang. The equipment is European and state of the art. The winery manager is French. Its wines have won prizes in Europe and the United States. And the ultimate owner is the People's Liberation Army.

Suntime Corporation (or Xin Tian as it is known in China) has invested $350 million in its wineries in western China. All of it spent on Italian fermentation tanks, French oak barrels and the funding of seedlings for new farmers. It also has bottling plants in Shanghai and Shandong.

"This is a huge winery by international standards," says Fred Nauleau, oenologist and winery manager. "There is nothing as big as this in France."

And the grapes?

"They are great, it is a pleasure to make wine with them," he says.

Suntime's main shareholder is the Xinjiang PLA Construction Corporation - an army-controlled entity formed after the 1949 revolution when soldiers were demobilised and Mao Zedong's government adopted the policy of half soldier, half farmer in its border province.

"When the government calls they pick up their weapons, otherwise they develop the land and farm," as one local explained.

Some 1000 of those soldier/farmer households are now under contract to Suntime to produce grapes. They have just finished burying the vines in Xinjiang, some 10,000 hectares of them, all placed 25 centimetres under the earth. And it is all done by hand.

The vines are buried each year from November to April, to protect them from the severe cold weather in this province that borders Kazakhstan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Suntime has entered 30-year contracts with the farmers. It guarantees them a minimum price and undertakes to purchase all their production.

Chief agronomist Dong Xinping estimates that the farmers are earning three times the profits they made before the late 1990s when they grew corn and wheat.

Suntime is just one face of China's wine industry, which has undergone enormous change in the last decade. But this winery captured the imagination of Australian wine industry members who visited it this year. They were impressed with the technology and the scale of the operation.

"China is one of the fastest- growing wine producers in the world. Australia is quite naive about it," says Ross Brown of Brown Brothers Wines. He equates the attitude to that of the French who ignored the growth of the Australian wine industry early on.

China traces its wine origins back centuries, but only since the mid-1990s has it had a serious, quality-driven wine industry. Much of the wine produced in China is still undrinkable by Australian standards, but there is a noticeable increase in the amount of quality wine produced.

There is little doubt some of the improvement is due to blending with bulk wine imported from Chile, Australia and Spain. (Australia's bulk wine exports to China ballooned from just over 1 million litres in 2004 to more than 14 million litres last year).

But Suntime prides itself on using only China-produced wine. It won a gold medal at the Brussels International Wine Competition last year for cabernet sauvignon aged in barrels and a bronze medal at the San Francisco International Wine Competition for its Marco Polo Red.

The change in quality has been particularly noticeable to consumers in the past two years - from restaurants in Shanghai to cellar doors in Shanxi province.

But China has a long way to go. Colin Campbell, of Campbell's Wines in Rutherglen, concluded during his visit to China that the industry was "where Australia was 25 years ago".

It might not take China 25 years to catch up. Just eight years ago Suntime did not produce a drop of wine. Now, with its capacity of 100,000 tonnes (not all of it utilised), it would be equivalent in size to one of the top five wineries in Australia.

Suntime is only the sixth largest wine producer in China. Three big producers, Changyu, Great Wall and Dynasty, account for 60 per cent of production. According to the latest figures published by Xinhua, China's wine output was 434,000 tons in 2005, up 25.4 per cent on 2004; and it is projected to reach 800,000 tons by 2010.

Exports account for a small percentage of production but they may have to increase if local consumption doesn't improve dramatically. The Chinese are not great wine drinkers - wine accounts for only 2 per cent of the expenditure on alcohol.

Companies like Suntime are punting on the possibility that this will change as more enter the equivalent of middle-class income groups.

IN THE BALANCE

*The top three producers make up 60 per cent of production: Changyu 25 per cent; Great Wall 20 per cent; Dynasty 15 per cent.

*Suntime ranks sixth among wine producers.

*Red wine predominates: cabernet sauvignon and merlot.

*Suntime's 2002 cab sav retails for 430 yuan ($70).

*China's wine production 2005 was 434,000 tonnes, up 25 pc.

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thank you.

Please send me emails for updates. I'm very interested in learning more about the China Wine Industry. Thanks.