Wine tours are the latest attraction to China's emerging Ningxia region
To the west of Ningxia's capital, Yinchuan, the four-lane Shenyang Highway pierces a sun-parched, rocky expanse. To one side are the city limits, to the other the eastern foothills of the Helan Mountains, a 200km-long divider separating the southern flanks of Inner Mongolia's Gobi Desert and arid – yet still fertile – plains.
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The Helan silhouette hangs over the horizon like a mirage, its crevices hard to make out through the haze that blankets the sky even on this crisp and sunny October morning.
Roads flanking the Helan Mountain range lead to award-winning wineries. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng
'It's a pity you can't see the view today, for it makes a very special start to the tour,' says 'Kiki' Chen Shu, my driver and the founder and main English-speaking guide of Ningxia Wine, a small company that organises winery tours in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region's Helan Mountains East.
This
wine-producing region was born in 1998, when, after nationwide viticulture research led to the improvement of the desert-encircled area's saline-alkaline soils, wine grapes were planted over 3,000 hectares of the barren expanse between the Helan Mountains and the alluvial plain of the Yellow River.
Despite its relatively small size, Helan Mountains East – which encompasses subregions including Shizuishan, Yinchuan, Yongning, Qingtongxia and Hongsipu – has drawn comparisons to Argentina's Mendoza wine region, which is geographically similar.
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Having what's considered China's
most promising wine-producing area , Ningxia has established a provincial wine bureau and invested heavily in vine planting, and now has more than 200 wineries, three of which Chen will show me today.
Helan Mountains East piqued international interest in 2011, when the Jia Bei Lan Grand Reserve 2009, a cabernet sauvignon by producer Helan Qingxue, won the international trophy in the Decanter World Wine Awards Bordeaux blend category.
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