One of the more potent symbols of the westernisation of China has been the extent to which the Chinese have taken to wine. Consumption is rising at an estimated 15 per cent a year, so that not just Shanghai and Beijing but also the second-tier Chinese cities have become more popular destinations for French wine exporters than New York and London. So effective has the bordeaux sales machine been that a considerable proportion of the fortunes recently made in China have been spent on red bordeaux - especially the grandest names and particularly, for a while, the first-growth Chateau Lafite - with a direct inflationary effect on global wine prices. Then, as the Chinese discovered France's second most famous red wine, burgundy prices rose, too. China's new connoisseurs have even begun to invest in wine estates themselves. According to Bordeaux estate agents Maxwell Storrie Baynes, more than 50 local wine chateaux are already in Chinese hands and demand continues unabated.
The vine is not entirely new to the Chinese, however. It was known to gardeners in far western China at least as early as the 2nd century AD when wine, very possibly grape wine, was certainly made and consumed. European grape varieties were introduced to eastern China at the end of the 19th century but it was only in the late 20th century that grape-based wine insinuated itself into Chinese (urban) society.
China's love affair with grape wine - putaojiu as opposed to mere jiu, meaning any alcoholic drink - was so effectively encouraged by the state, partly in an effort to reduce cereal imports, that the latest figures from the Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin show China's total vineyard area (including those devoted to fresh and dried grape production) nearly doubling, to an estimated 1,384,000 acres (560,000ha), between 2000 and 2011. The figures suggest that China has been the world's sixth most important wine producer since the turn of the century. Independently verified Chinese statistics are hard to come by, however, and wine bottlers have notoriously bumped up production with imported wine, grape must and concentrate, and even liquids completely unrelated to grapes.