Wine Region Classifications

China’s winegrowing areas are dictated by four major environmental factors - mountain ranges west extending from the Himalayas, jungles south of the Yangtze River, endless deserts and steppes north, and vast seas of the Pacific Ocean to the east. 

China does not have any official state-wide classifications for wine regions. Currently, wine regions are dictated by administrative divisions:

  1. Regions are first sorted by the provincial level, including autonomous regions (Ningxia, Yunnan, etc.).

  2. Provinces are further seperated into prefectures that include urban and rural areas (Yinchuan, Diqing, etc.).

  3. Prefectures can be further seperated into county-level divisions for rural areas, where applicable.

For example, the winemaking region Shangri-La is a county-level city within the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in northwest Yunnan province.

Note that many prefectures only have experimental, boutique, or small-scale operations. China’s seven key wine zones remain Ningxia, Shandong, Xinjiang, Hebei, Gansu, Shanxi, and Yunnan.

Prefecture-level map of China’s wine regions
Dark red = Major winegrowing region
Light red = Minor winegrowing region

Styles

Across China, grapes used for red wine account for 80% of plantings. These wines are typically Bordeaux in style - full bodied, high in tannins, with new French Oak.

White wines are typically rich and ripe, with new French oak added to Chardonnay.

There are increasing levels of innovative wine styles, led by small independent winemakers. The popularity of white wines that use extended maceration or maturation in traditional clay amphora (陶罐) have encouraged some larger wineries to create their own 'amber’ wines, and red wines use minimal-to-zero new oak.

Most Common Varieties (Red & White)

Red:
1. Cabernet Sauvignon
2. Merlot
3. Cabernet Gernischt
4. Marselan
5. Syrah

White:
1. Chardonnay
2. Vidal
3. Welschriesling
4. Petit Manseng
5. Muscat Hamburg

China’s GIs

China has over 2,500 products protected by Geographical Indication, similar to the EU’s Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) system. Well known GIs include Pu’er Tea, Moutai, Luzhou Laojiao, Shaoxing Rice Wine, Pinggu Peaches, and Jinhua Ham.

There is only one GI dedicated to Chinese wine, Ningxia’s Eastern Foothills of Helan Mountain, established in 2013. Local efforts to further specify wine regions are in development.