China looking for revamping its wine production setup in Ningxia to becomes arch rivals to France’s Bordeaux

With a sharp rise in wine exports and a tour of the Chinese President previous year, China appears to revamp its wine-producing region of Ningxia to renovate it into one of the biggest rivals to France’s Bordeaux. By 2035, Ningxia’s Helan Mountains area are aiming to produce over 600 million bottles that are going to worth around USD 3.13 billion. The region belonging close to the Yellow River is about an approximately two hours’ flight west from Beijing and sits at the same latitude to that of France. If the goal is achieved, Helan Mountains’ eastern foothills are expected to become a global and influential production area, wherein the scale of production matches that of Bordeaux.

Ningxia happens to be one of many wine-producing regions in the country of China, however the Helan Mountains’ eastern foothills possesses a diverse variety of grapes that are expected to be on-par with that of Bordeaux or the Napa Valley from the U.S., and accounts for over 50% of domestic wine production. If the 15-year target is more than 4 times the Ningxia’s annual wine production, the numbers are expected to match up roughly to those produced in France’s wine capital.

In 2020, Bordeaux produced over 521 million bottles that were amounting to USD 4.16 billion. Just like many other high-profile Chinese plans, the one crafted for wine appears vague on the implementation basis. The plan lays emphasis on developing and improving local winemaking ecological conservation and knowledge for opening a window of opportunities for China’s wine to integrate it with the rest of the world. Previous year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Ningxia’s wine exports soared to 46.3% to around USD 414,100 that included destinations like the U.S., the EU, Japan and Australia.