This week, in the Food Issue, I write about China’s sudden romance with wine. The notion of getting rich by selling wine in China has a long history, which is marked almost entirely by failure. When the Changyu winery opened in 1892, the first winemaker was an Austro-Hungarian diplomat named Baron M. von Babo. When he took the job, Baron von Babo boldly ordered a hundred and forty thousand seedlings from abroad in order to start a vineyard. But seventy per cent of them died before they reached Chinese soil.
Prospects have sharply improved since the days of the Baron, and, today, China is one of the world’s fastest-growing wine markets. (Chinese buyers are consuming so much that they are affecting wine prices for some of the most expensive bottles.) In this video, produced by Mengfan Wu, we visit a wine class hosted by Torres China, which is trying to introduce new consumers to an unfamiliar product. We also hear from Don St. Pierre, Jr., the chief executive of A.S.C. Fine Wines, who explains why Chinese consumers sometimes prefer to down their glasses in a single enthusiastic gulp.
