The Chinese White Revolution

Fang Wang had been living in Germany for many years when her father, a Ningxia wine pioneer, called her home in 2010. She has since made a name for herself at the 16-hectare Kanaan Winery. Her high-end Crazy Fang Cabernet Sauvignon, available at the winery for £175, has attracted critical acclaim from Suckling among others and a cult following. Recently she added a round, full and soft Alsatian-style Riesling to her portfolio. “In China we have a culture of business dinners and gifts,” she said while guiding me through a tasting of four vintages of Crazy Fang. “That’s how most wines are consumed. But during Covid I realized that most of my customers are young, like 35, and they would like to pay by themselves for wine. They don’t recognize if it is from France or China, but would love to buy a wine that is good and share it with the people they love. They sit down and say, ‘let’s enjoy this bottle of wine from Ningxia, the Gobi Desert.’”

Down the road at Domaine des Arômes, French-trained Miao Sun follows biodynamic principles in tending 6.5 hectares of vines while her husband takes care of the cellar. They too are focused on Cabernet Sauvignon, with a few rows reserved for Chardonnay. This luscious, golden-hued, barrel-fermented wine is aged 20 months in French barriques. All of the bottles released in 2025 sold out online in less than a minute, yet another proof of the increasing domestic demand for white wine. Almost all sales are done via digital platforms, which has enabled Miao to better understand her customers. Most of them live in Guangdong, Shanghai and Beijing and, yes, they do pay attention to information on the back label. 83% are male and 75% use iPhones.

Further north at Silver Heights, Emma Gao works with her husband Thierry Courtade. They met at Château Calon-Ségur in the early 2000s and now farm 20 hectares of vines while leading the region’s push for biodiversity. Next to the winery there is a flower and herb garden that attracts butterflies and bees, with a compost heap created by their seven goats, six cows and 50 sheep. Soil treatments are applied twice annually. Silver Heights was the first Ningxia producer to bottle Marselan, now a standard offering in the region, and they continue to come up with experimental cuvées for adventurous drinkers. There is a Malvoisie-based orange wine, Sand Lake Moon, and a wholly unique Pet-Nat called Bloom made up of 80% Chardonnay, 12% Pinot Noir and 8% unfermented rice wine.