World wine club: China is the OIV’s newest member

China officially became a member of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), an intergovernmental group that “provides grape and wine producing and consuming countries with information to develop regulations, minimise barriers to trade, promotes sustainable production and protect consumers.”

China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs submitted the application on May 14 and it was accepted by the OIV on November 14.

The news is not only important for wine in China, which ranks as a top-10 consumer and has seen its local producers gain global attention this past decade, but also for table grapes, as China is the planet’s top grower.

In total, China has the third-highest vineyard surface at 785,000 hectares, behind Spain at 955,000 and France 812,000 and ahead of Italy 718,000, per the OIV.

Two other Chinese entities–the municipality of Yantai and the region of Yinchuan–already have OIV observer status, with those roots going back as far as 1987. Details below.

The likelihood of China joining as a full member grew quickly last year.

In April, a joint statement after a meeting of China’s Xi Jinping and France’s Emmanuel Macron read, “France will support the application that China will submit to join the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) as swiftly as possible….”

In June, the OIV sponsored the International Conference on Grape and Wine Industries (ICGWI) in Ningxia. Along with OIV delegates presenting at the forum, Director General Pau Roca sent a video message and said, “we now look forward to having China as a full member very soon, with all the rights and influence that the nation deserves.”

At the same time in Spain, at the OIV General Assembly, guests saw a video by Sui Pengfei of China’s Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, who said, “China looks forward to joining the OIV as a full member as early as possible and along with other members advancing high-quality development in the vine and wine sector.”

Close ties were maintained the following March, when a Ningxia delegation led by vice-governor Wang Li traveled to Dijon to meet new OIV leader John Barker.

The application was made in June and the rest is history.

“This will put China on the same stage with other big grape and wine producers in OIV, the largest inter-governmental organization for these sectors,” said Ma Huiqin, a professor at Beijing’s China Agricultural University, last year about the likely membership. Ma helped coordinate Ningxia’s OIV observer status in 2012.

“China has a very long table grape-growing history but the modern wine-making one is quite short,” she said, adding that OIV is a good platform for topics like sustainable production and boosting “vertical” wine business opportunities, such as those related to culture and tourism.

As noted, China currently has two entities as observers in OIV.

The first is Yantai, a coastal municipality in Shandong province recognized by the OIV in 1987 as an “International City of Vine and Wine.” Yantai is home to Changyu, founded in 1892 and the nation’s biggest wine producer, plus boutique operations such as Longdai (Lafite), Runaway Cow, Treaty Port, Longting, Mystic Island and Jiangyu. As a port city, Yantai is a hub for imported bulk wines and has faced criticism as a source of fakes.

The second is Ningxia, a region in north-central China that became an observer in 2012 and has emerged as the country’s leading producer in recent years.

“Several people involved with [Ningxia’s] OIV application told me a key motivation is to improve Chinese wine quality via greater access to winery management, wine-making and wine standards info,” I posted in 2012. The aim was for Ningxia to be “the first region in China to fully realize the need to use international standards for the local market.”

Since then, OIV and Ningxia have regularly interacted. In 2012, after Ningxia joined as an observer, then-OIV President Claudia Quini and then-OIV Director-General Federico Castellucci visited that August for the region’s wine conference. The two sides have exchanged high-level delegations and been jointly involved in forums and trade fairs ever since.

(Then-OIV President Monica Christmann even served as a judge for the second Ningxia Winemakers Challenge in 2017.)

Ningxia has been an especially important player for China’s OIV membership for several reasons.

First, it has emerged in the past dozen years as the country’s leading producer. Back in 2012, when Jancis Robinson visited, the region was still a faint blip on the wine world’s radar. But Robinson, as part of a ten-person panel, rated 35 of the 39 wines as good or better, and it added to the evidence that Ningxia had great potential.

At that time, most wines were generally modeled on a Bordeaux style, with ample oak, despite Ningxia having little in common in terms of climate, soil and general terroir with that region. Since, then, we have seen a blossoming in terms of the grape varieties and styles pursued by producers, and a steady rise in overall quality.

Second, Ningxia has also drawn increasing attention from the central government. A Bureau of Grape and Floriculture Industry was established in 2012 and helped get things going, with the region quickly organizing trade fairs, conferences and contests, and undertaking initiatives such as creating a central nursery from which new and established wineries could source rootstock.

Things accelerated in 2021, with a press conference in Beijing announcing central government support for –it’s a long title–the Ningxia National Open Development Comprehensive Pilot Zone for Grape and Wine Industry.

The 2025 targets include 1 million mu / 160,000 acres / 66,000 hectares) of vineyards, 300 million bottles of wine annually and RMB100 billion (USD13.8 billion) of revenue by 2025. The 2035 stretch goals were even more ambitious: 1.5 million mu / 250,000 acres / 100,000 hectares of vineyards, 600 million bottles and RMB200 (USD27.6 million) of value by 2035.

It should be noted the region also has special significance for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who first visited in 1997 as part of an anti-poverty mission from Fujian province, where he was a high-ranking official. That trip included some of the areas where vineyards and wineries now sit, such as Minning–‘Min’ is another name for Fujian while ‘ning’ refers to Ningxia.

Given that Ningxia has traditionally had one of the lower GDP per capita rates in China, boosting a value-added industry such as wine fits governmental goals of spreading the wealth of the country’s economic growth.

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