Chinese Wine Tours

[Randy W]

The typical Chinese wine tour consists of four to 12 people, lasts about a week, and can cost upwards of $160 per person, per day, excluding transportation. 

In exchange, wine tour operators promise participants, who prefer to be called “students,” rather than tourists, the chance to enter wineries that are not generally open to the public, meet face-to-face with vintners and winemakers, and drink and eat in the wineries’ own cellars.

from the Sixth Tone on Facebook 
https://www.facebook.com/sixthtone/posts/3175353846116787

Sideways in China’s Southwest
With international travel restricted, Chinese wine lovers are lapping up boutique tours of domestic winegrowing regions.

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Our destination was the tiny Tibetan village of Cizhong, where Yunnan meets the Tibetan Plateau. The legend of Cizhong is well-known inside China: Over a hundred years ago, French missionaries arrived in the area and, in addition to ministering to local believers, taught them how to grow grapes and make wine. When we arrived, our guide took us to the village’s Catholic Church, closed to locals because of the pandemic, but still open to connected tourists. From there, we were taken to a small vineyard said to be where the missionaries first planted grapes in Cizhong, followed by the home of the local priest for an informal wine tasting.

It was exactly the kind of niche, bespoke winery tour experience that has charmed domestic tourists since the outbreak of the pandemic curtailed international travel. It was also a testament to the strides made by the country’s wine industry over the past decade.