Winemaker Nicolas Billot-Grima (right)

----By Mark Godfrey

All the ganbei (toasting) was in baijiu when I started in Qingdao in 1987," recalls winemaker Nicolas Billot-Grima. By 1997, the toasts at Chinese tables were raised as much with wine as fiery rice wine, says the 41-year-old Frenchman, who has been tending vines here for 20 years. He thinks China is turning to the rich red of chardonnay for better health. "Chinese integrate the French paradox. They know wine is something good for the body."

Supply and demand are both rising in China's wine stores, partly because there's more choice since China lowered tariffs on wine imports in 2004. The annual volume of wine handled in Shanghai last year topped 50,000 tonnes, up 25 percent year-on-year.

Few Western sommeliers were even thinking about selling here, however, when Frenchman Nicolas Billot-Grima arrived in 1987. "I had met an English guy from Hong Kong who wanted to develop a vineyard in China. We met in Bordeaux. бн People around me said, hey you are crazy!" Six generations of the Billot-Grima family have bottled the La Roche Pipeau label at the family chateau in Bordeaux. "But Europe was too small for me. My father is of strong character. Me too. So together we said 'okay, I let you choose Europe, I the world.'"

Few gave him a chance. No one was predicting a China boom when Billot-Grima arrived on one of the then weekly flights from Paris into Beijing Capital Airport. "Even with your visa you needed another visa to go to the countryside. бн People touched your hair to see if you were for real."

Billot-Grima didn't dally in developing a vineyard and winery. "We started with a winery in Shandong. It was my first experience of the Chinese way of doing it. It was not easy. We were in the mountains, 25 kilometres from Qingdao on 25 hectares. I had to bring grape vines from France and plant them." Billot-Grima and a merry band of trainee sommeliers also took over a down-at-heel local vineyard which grew rostocks, a Russian grape variety. Billot-Grima switched to chardonnay. "Rostocks has a lot of yield but it's not so good."

Billot was a pioneer, but he wasn't the first Frenchman, or even only winemaker, in town. Chinese brand Dynasty was already bottling red wine and French drinks company Pernod Ricard had an agreement to produce Dragon Seal, another local red. "They were here since 1985, but their real target was to import cognac. They made wine just to make wine."

Ceci n'est pas un raisin

Some Chinese winemakers at the time didn't even use grapes. "When people said they were a winemaker in 1987 they were usually in chemistry. So you learned to ask, 'Do you have your own vineyard?'" Concoctions of water, chemical and aroma still sell as wine in parts of China even to this day, he says. "You add some colour, it's no problem to fake."

The rich soil of Shandong proved good for white grape varieties, but ultimately too humid in summer for the red. "We wanted good-quality grapes." After the 1989 harvest, he changed jobs, working now with a Hong Kong-based company with extensive catering and food interests in China. "China was opening. I mean big business. It was not easy; there were no normal market channels. You had to do everything. But it was very promising."

Promising enough for him to start bottling his own label, Chateau Tayshi. Billot-Grima has been bottling nearly 10,000 bottles a year, mostly red, but plans to eventually bottle 100,000. "There is no competition for what I'm doing," he says with a tone of utter certainty. But Chinese shop shelves, surely, are chock-full of expensive wine? "Most are blends," says Billot-Grima. "When you get colour in China, it's usually a blend. I like competition. Because it encourages you to make good wine. Bordeaux wine is so popular бн because everyone there tries for the same quality."

A huge domestic market makes China exciting, says Billot-Grima. "This market is huge. In France the target is not to sell in the country but to sell in Europe. The Chinese market is interesting because you can develop in China." Who's drinking? "At least the high class, they like very expensive foreign wine. There are at least 15 million people with the capacity to. And there are around 70 million earning above ?1,200 a month. These people can drink, too. бн They know that wine is the French paradox - it's alcohol that's also good for you. And China likes the French paradox."

The food here is another reason why a highly regarded Bordeaux winemaker like Billot-Grima sticks with Shandong. "Chinese food goes well with wine. I make wine to find a way it will go with a dish. It's a big point for me. For me there are two foods in the world: Chinese and French. If the food is over-spiced you can't taste wine. I have developed vineyards in Russia and 250 hectares in India. But I don't enjoy the food there. People say, 'Why don't you stay?', but I came back to China. бн Indians drink whiskey more than wine - the food isn't associated with wine. I stayed two years in India and each time I got sick. I was tired from India. I came back to China and was motivated again."

Good for French labels, the market leaders. Foreigners (Chile and Argentina are strong competitors) dominate the high end of the market because local labels put quantity over quality. "Many wineries, I won't name them, but 99 percent of Chinese wine is imported bulk and blended with Chinese wine because the quality of the local grapes is bad."

Quality control

Local grapes are also a victim of the quantity-over-quality mentality, says Billot-Grima. "The farmers who handle the vineyard, their main target is to produce the maximum quantity. They have only five mu (hectares) and they want to make 30 tonnes. We just want seven tonnes. So you see the difference." He also blames Chinese wineries. "They want to buy grapes as cheaply as possible. You must manage your grapes, your wine and your marketing."

Now Billot-Grima is trying to inculcate similar concerns for quality among a bunch of farmers in Shandong, a Chinese province more familiar with rice and soya fields than vineyards. An abundance of labour and cheap land made Chateau Tayshi and his latest project, an exploratory vineyard in the Badaling district near Beijing, possible. "First, we have very poor soil; before, no one used this land. It was only stone. So it's cheap. And farmers are available." Locals were enthusiastic when Billot-Grima reaped his first harvest from Badaling in September. "The farmers who were trained now have their own little vineyards. They are selling to other wineries бн people know more about handling a vineyard."

Aside from bottling his wine, Billot-Grima helps others make theirs. He's a consultant on state-owned vineyards in Yunnan and in the far west Muslim province of Xinjiang, including Turpan-based Suntime Winery, the largest in China size-wise. "They're spending a lot of money. I think they can do very well in Xinjiang. It's dry, there's no problem of disease. The difference between day and night temperatures is great for the grapes to ripen. But their marketing is not so good."

Billot is very fussy about where he markets Chateau Tayshi and his French wines. A few select bars and shops sell it but he won't deal with supermarkets. "No way. I have limited quantities and I want to know that when the people drink the wine [they know] we are not commercial wines. A premium Tayshi sells at RMB150 (?14.70), the cheapest at RMB100. "Carrefour is a great business, but my wine, it's not the right place. I want the consumer to know it's a true wine from China. People will have to look for it." From his homestead in Bordeaux, a 1996 Larosse Pipot sells for RMB340 a bottle in Beijing. "It's something exclusive."

Ironically, Chinese wine is too expensive for France. "Chinese labels know the market and they like money. They put prices high." Ignorance among wine drinkers allows the price hikes. "In France we care about what's inside. We don't care about the outside. In China they care about the outside because the inside they don't know."

Winemaking in China lacks the heritage of Bordeaux. "A guy will say, 'I want to make the best wine in the world', and I say, 'Okay, you try, but with the soil here you can do this.'" Billot-Grima advises aspiring local winemakers to think small. "In China when you have a million plans you will make a million mistakes."

"This is normal. I'm working with business people and they don't know this business. They just say hey this could be a good business. You see advertisements everywhere for Chinese labels like Dyansty, Changyu. Everywhere you see people drinking wine. If you drink wine you will get the car, you get the wife."

Sometimes, too, you get a good wine. Like Yunnan Hong, a Chinese red produced by a Hong Kong company which took on a state winery, two hours from the border with Vietnam. "There are valleys, it's very interesting. It's not dry but you harvest in July so it's different. And there's a specific hybrid grape from there. This is not being blended."

Sales of Yunnan Hong are strong in the boom towns of Guangdong province and among tourists. "Yunnan is a very touristy place. I never see it sold in Beijing." In China's wine business most marketing is local. Another of Billot-Grima's favourites, Shandong-made Hua Dong, sells best in Qingdao and not in Beijing. "It's a Chardonnay, it's okay."

China's wine drinkers are getting sophisticated, too. "This market will have more people who understand a good wine. And some will ask 'why is this selling at RMB500 a bottle when what's inside is RMB5?' And these people, the high class, will understand what I'm doing with Chateau Tayshi."