It is not difficult to see why French and Australian wines are considered to be status symbols in China. The wine’s country of origin operates the same way the Chanel or Balenciaga brand does for handbags. It’s more than a quality guarantee. It becomes a cultural artefact imbued with meaning. Breaking out a 20-year-old bottle of Penfolds Grange for your guests is similar to stealing a few sips of powdery wine at communion. You are participating in a ritual, a lifestyle – a narrative of refinement and taste as defined by the European ruling class, and the other in which the accent was shaped by the slurred mumblings of their colonial settlers.
The international luxury wine market has recognised China’s purchasing power.
If you have $1,500 AUD to spare, you will find the hanzi for the number eight – an auspicious number in Chinese culture – on the 2008 bottles of Château Lafite Rothschild. But if wealth and luxury are two sides of the same capitalist coin, why isn’t China known as a producer of fine wines?
This is illustrated by Ao Yun, a luxury wine brand that is owned by LVMH Group, the home of Moët & Chandon and Louis Vuitton. If you’re wondering ‘why haven’t I heard of this?’, the answer is devastatingly simple. Ao Yun vineyards are located in Shanghai. Despite being synonymous with style and luxury, not even LVMH could overcome the negative bias against Chinese-produced wine in order to establish Ao Yun as a premium global product.
Consumer theory suggests that our perception of a product is based on extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Award-winning vintages by Chinese winemakers prove that China has the terroir to produce a delicious drop. This suggests that the actual quality of the wine is less important than how we feel about it.
After all, many of us drink for intrinsic reasons: we like the way alcohol makes us feel whether we enjoy the taste or how it lubricates social gatherings. Perhaps taste is less influenced by the acidity of the soil but rather the social and emotional impressions left on the landscape of memory, and how we feel about Chinese wine has less to do with the wine itself but rather how we perceive the Chinese and their culture.
Even as luxury wine producers bow to the taste of China’s nouveau riche, Western wine critics are quick to condemn Chinese consumers for confusing price with taste. The New York Times observed in gleeful horror as a Chinese man diluted a glass of Château Lafite with Sprite. This rhetoric may conflate China’s taste for wine with how their wine actually tastes.
In European countries, winemaking and culinary traditions evolve together. The deep reds of France flourished against the richness of the lamb dishes that formed their staple diet. This ‘food-friendly’ sentiment is echoed by Australian winemakers, whose roots trace back to their early colonial ancestors.
Wine does not have the same history in China. Similar to other luxury goods, French wine signified the country’s explosive growth; it is not a remnant of a colonial past. Consequently, wine has become a product that has been adapted to local values and taste – not a cultural artefact bound by European tradition.
The Western wine industry is not only slow to recognise the different role that wine plays in an Asian market, but it also does not recognise the growing appreciation for wine amongst the Chinese middle-class consumers. If we do not make an attempt to bridge the gap, the chasm between the Eastern and Western wine industry will only grow.
Accusing Chinese wine consumers of having an underdeveloped palate highlights how Western producers are using a Eurocentric lexicon of food and wine pairings to make assumptions of how China’s wine market operates. At best, it misunderstands the cultural significance of wine in the Chinese market and at worst, it is a form of cultural imperialism that reinforces a Eurocentric narrative as superior to other frameworks of meaning.
Much like a well-balanced Barossa blend, Australia prides itself on our union of cultures. In Melbourne, you can enjoy a bottle of funky orange over aromatic plates of Mauritian snacks or ground the numbing flavours of Sichuan hotpot with a chilled red. Here, the wine list is not a break-up on a Post-it note – a careless afterthought. It is intentional, meticulous and often prolific. No matter the cuisine, the Melbourne dining scene bleeds red – and by red, we mean a juicy pinot noir from a small-batch producer.
While our city breaks bread or roti over wine, it appears that this relationship is a one-way street. The selection of wine in restaurants and bottle shops is decidedly Australian or European. There is as much Asian representation in the local wine industry as Hollywood’s Ghost in a Shell with Scarlett Johansson playing the Japanese lead.
As a wine producer, China is quickly catching up to Australia: it has moved up to seventh place, only two spots behind Australia in the global rankings. Its internationally-recognised wineries and award-wining drops prove that quantity and quality are not exclusive concepts. Like many talented Asian actresses (hello, Lana Condor or Gemma Chan!) the Chinese wine industry is just waiting for the recognition it rightly deserves.
If we don’t want to see a Woody Allen apologist play yet another female action star, or miss out on a refreshing interpretation or a delicious take on our favourite beverage, we need to ask ourselves: why aren’t we drinking Chinese wine?
Given that Australia’s wine culture has strong roots with its European settlers, it can be easy to cite tradition as an excuse. However, if you follow the grape vine further back in history (going back 9,000 years or so), you will find evidence of wine made with grapes in central China, making it one of the most ancient winemaking sites in the world.
The same way that local winemakers have adapted European grape varietals to our warmer climate, we as consumers can also identify how our preferences need to evolve. Given the overwhelming evidence in favour of Chinese wine, we can interrogate how our cultural conditioning has influenced how we feel about wine made in China and ultimately, what type of framework we are using to determine the quality and the wine that we drink.
So, the next time you are perusing the shelves at a wine store to find a tipple to match your XO pipis at Seafood Street, or at Supernormal, wondering what to wash down their ‘Typhoon Shelter’ ribs with, ask the staff if there are any Chinese wines they could match with your meal.
If the answer’s no, demand (read: ask politely) an explanation. Because if there’s one thing we Melburnians know how to do well it’s to challenge and overturn our outdated conventions in the name of progress and taste. After all, what better way to honour and cultivate the diverse tapestry of our dining scene?