A Taste of Chinese Wine

I’ve had two opportunities to taste wine made in China. The first occasion was a blind tasting where we were asked to guess the country of origin of eight wines. I was the only member of the Roanoke Fine Wine Society to identify the Chinese wine correctly, not because I actually thought it was Chinese wine but because I thought it was cooked. I believe my exact words were “it tastes like it came on a slow boat from China.” Ding, Ding!

My most recent occasion was a Thanksgiving dinner where the host offered up a wine from China which had been given to him by friend who was a frequent traveler there. My husband Robert also travels to China for business but he has never been temped to bring back Chinese wine. Having sampled more than a few, he prefers to stick to Chinese beer and green tea.

I understand why after this last taste of Zixuan Wine. I actually tasted this wine on two separate days. The first sip was on the day of the Thanksgiving dinner when I rescued the bottle from being dumped by the host after his first sip. Give it a day or two, I thought, maybe it’s just bottle shock. My notes below are from the later tasting but I must say the wine hadn’t changed much with some air.

Nose: Tar and plum, medicinal and hot--not enough to singe the nose hairs but pretty close.

Palate: Lot’s of grainy tannin, chalk, blackberry. And something I remember from my youth in Alberta called chokecherry, a wild berry also known as prunus virginiana, that has a toxic pit but once removed the remaining berry can be eaten and used to make wine, if you dare. My dad actually made wine out of these berries but that experiment proved unsuccessful and we left a case of it for the new owners when we moved out of our house in Calgary.

Finish: Very long, not entirely unpleasant but with lots of new oak, some metallic components, and a dry, chalky feel on the tongue that lingered for over a minute.

I have no idea what grape this wine was made from (I would guess Cabernet Sauvignon) or what it cost to buy and I could not find this label on the company website, but I don’t think I would enjoy this wine at any price.

Much like my father’s chokecherry wine, some wines are best left behind.