Jancis Robinson：数百万中国人将会失望（转载）
数百万中国人将会失望
作者：Jancis Robinson
时隔五年之后，本月初，我又来到了中国。许多好奇的人来中国是为了寻找这个世界的未来的答案，而我来中国是为了寻找葡萄酒。
在2002、2003年，我第一次踏上这片土地时，就已经对中国葡萄酒相对较低的质量，留下了深刻的印象。绝大部分葡萄酒酒体非常非常单薄，不太清爽。五年前，葡萄酿酒仍是一个非常勉强的现象，但与此同时，中国已经是世界第六大葡萄酒生产国。渴望西方式生活方式的中国人成几何级数增长，而葡萄酒现在已日益成为西式生活方式的必备佳品。
占有统治地位的长城酒厂，据说每年可以灌装约1亿五千万瓶葡萄酒。我佩服中国人的决心和高度组织化，但我更期待看见葡萄酒质量的真实进步。但是，总体而言，很遗憾，五年来，中国葡萄酒质量看起来并没有多大改观。
一些中国的顶级葡萄酒教育工作者和专业买家，经过善意的预选，最后挑了15款红酒、1款白葡萄酒、1款桃红酒，在浦东上海国际葡萄酒中心，一幢摩天大楼的第24层，一个由单间办公室改装成的葡萄酒学校里，由我进行盲尝。自上次访问以来，这里数以百计的摩天大楼，如雨后春笋般林立。本月，你还可以从楼上欣赏到河（黄浦江，作者注），但显而易见，很快又有两、三幢写字楼拔地而起，挡住视线。
一些好的中国葡萄酒：
Catai高级解百纳 2003 山东
君顶酒庄酒 东方波尔多干红 2005 山东
怡园酒庄 庄主珍藏酒2005 山西
华夏长城A 波尔多葡萄酒 2005 河北昌黎
华夏长城B 波尔多葡萄酒 1998 河北昌黎
我的伙伴品酒师品尝后，已经否定了其中四分之三的葡萄酒。在这些精选的葡萄酒中，有些还含有化学和几丝腐朽的气味，使我一下子就想起了英国1970年代的黑暗日子。只有一瓶酒口感清新。
中国葡萄酒市场是如此巨大，如此相对不发达，葡萄酒知识也不普及，酒厂也没有来自消费者的压力，去提高葡萄酒质量，生产供宴会专用的高档葡萄酒。中国葡萄酒市场被少数几个大企业主宰，如中粮集团（COFCO）的长城、张裕、王朝，无助于市场的良性发展。销售也很区域化，销售对象也仅在当地政府官员，更不用说酒店和饭店层面了。这些都亟待提高。
另一个问题是天气。在夏季和早秋，大部分酒厂降雨不断，不过，西部地区除外。西部地区与上海有5个小时的航程，并且费时、费力才能返回大、中城市。位于东海之滨的山东省曾大力发展葡萄酒产业，但是在潮湿的环境下，葡萄病虫害是一个长期的问题，酒精度也不足，常常需要靠添加糖，以提高酒精度。至少，每年秋天，葡萄栽培者不用辛苦地覆盖苗木，以防严冬的致命威胁。
相当多的中国葡萄种植业主严重依赖廉价劳动力。只有怡园酒庄，最有进取心的生产商之一，成功地实现了机械化耕作。着眼于未来，他们在中国进行创新性耕作，在葡萄行距之间留出足够的距离，以便拖拉机机械化作业。绝大部分葡萄由农民栽培，他们可能一生中从未尝过一滴葡萄酒。他们主要关注的是如何尽可能多地卖葡萄给酒厂。灌溉（在夏天雨季来临前）和大量使用化肥相当普遍。冬季长，生长期就相对较短。葡萄酒富有生气，但在有些地方，间杂种有豆类植物，结果导致葡萄酒体欠缺，酒性不足。
另一个深层次的问题是酿酒师的培训质量。在中国葡萄酒学院，学生教授的都是关于化学和酿酒硬件设施，葡萄酒品签少得可怜，更不用说品国外的葡萄酒了。Fongyee Walker，北京龙凤美酒咨询公司的创办人，英国剑桥大学毕业。他告诉我，在山东的一次酿酒师聚会上，一些专业人员设法开一瓶Chardonnay酒，而丝毫没有注意到酒已经坏了。
在新的葡萄酒产区，更多的注意力放在从遥远的法国进口昂贵的橡木桶，而不是放在如何确保果香味质量上。在怡园酒庄，我看见成堆成堆的橡木桶，仍然包着保鲜膜，因为2007年份太冷、太湿，还不足以酿造出高质量的葡萄酒来充装橡木桶。
绝大多数葡萄种类（仍然）是赤霞珠和美乐。实际上，也不可能进口嫁接苗，以补充完善葡萄种类。
中国葡萄酒市场看来已经被教育成：葡萄酒应当是红色、单薄、干骨，更加丹宁化、粗糙，而很少注重质朴感。有时真感到担忧：葡萄酒在中国有可能流行不起来？特别是一瓶葡萄酒的价钱是一瓶啤酒的约20倍，并且进口葡萄酒的税率达到近50%。每天都有数百万的中国人第一次品尝葡萄酒，并大失所望。
但是，上述所列几款葡萄酒口感则大不一样。看来，中粮集团（COFCO）的新宠，“君顶”酒庄酒的鲜明的新世界特点，应归功于智利顾问和经澳大利亚培训的酿酒师。正如怡园酒庄2006年份葡萄酒比以前具有更明显的水果香味，要归功于新任澳大利亚酿酒师一样。由撒丁葡萄酒公司Sella Mosca出品的Catai葡萄酒，口感完全不象中国的，正如长城酒厂的灌注方式完全不同于国内。
多年来，中国以灌注进口桶装葡萄酒而声名狼藉。但是中国葡萄酒标签管理更加严格了。中国葡萄酒博客www.grapewallofchina.com的Jim Boyce告诉我，他曾经看见一款灌注智利葡萄酒的中国商标。去年，中国进口桶装葡萄酒是进口瓶装葡萄酒的三倍多，足够灌装一亿三千万瓶葡萄酒。如果中国要生产出自己的好酒，他们应当找到合适的葡萄园地，拿出一番毅力才行。
原文发表于英国金融时报（2008年3月15日）
附原文：
‘Millions of Chinese will be disappointed’
By Jancis Robinson
Published: March 15 2008 01:58 | Last updated: March 17 2008 07:50
I went back to China earlier this month after a gap of five years. Visitors of a more serious bent may go to China in search of answers to the future the planet. I went in search of wine.
On my first forays in 2002 and 2003 I had been struck by the relatively low quality of Chinese wine and by what an extraordinarily high proportion of it tasted like very, very thin, not quite clean, red bordeaux. Wine made from grapes was still a pretty marginal phenomenon in China five years ago but, in the meantime, China has become the world’s sixth most important grower of grapevines. The number of Chinese with aspirations to a western lifestyle has, to use a hackneyed but in this case thoroughly justified phrase, grown exponentially. And wine is now seen as an increasingly familiar accoutrement to that lifestyle.
The dominant company, Great Wall, is said to fill about 150m bottles of wine a year now. As an admirer of Chinese determination and organisation, I was expecting to see real progress in wine quality. But, overall, I was disappointed that the norm did not seem to have changed much in five years.
Some of China’s best wine educators and professional wine-buyers had kindly conducted a pre-tasting and eventually gathered 15 reds, a white and a pink for me to taste, blind, in Shanghai’s International Wine Centre, a one-room office converted into a wine school on the 24th floor of one of the hundreds of skyscrapers that have sprouted in Pudong since my last visit. This month you can see the river from it, but it is already clear where another two or three office blocks will eventually block the view.
Chinese crackers
Some better than average Chinese wines:
Catai, Superior Cabernet Sauvignon 2003 Shandong
Château Junding, Oriental Dry Red Bordeaux Blend 2005 Shandong
Grace Vineyard, Chairman’s Reserve 2005 Shanxi
Great Wall Huaxia Vineyard A Bordeaux Blend 2005 Heibei (Changli)
Great Wall, Huaxia Vineyard B Bordeaux Blend 1998 Heibei (Changli)
My fellow tasters had rejected three-quarters of what they had initially tasted, but some of the chemical and occasionally rotten odours I found in some of the selected wines took me back to the dark days of 1970s Britain when only about one in two bottles smelt clean.
The Chinese market is so vast, and so relatively undeveloped and unschooled, that there seems to be little consumer pressure to improve the quality of what is sold in the straight-sided bordeaux-shaped wine bottles that are de rigueur there. It may not help that the domestic Chinese wine market is dominated by a handful of large companies such as Cofco’s Great Wall, Changyu and Dynasty, nor that distribution is so regionalised in China, where deals with local officials, not to mention layers of hotel and restaurant staff, are essential to progress.
Another problem is the weather. Summer and early autumn rains dog most vineyards except for those in the far west, five hours’ flight from Shanghai and a very long and expensive haul back to the major cities. Shandong on the east coast has been the focus for a high proportion of Chinese wine operations but vine diseases are a perennial problem in this humid climate and alcohol levels often need to be boosted by adding sugar, so-called chaptalisation. At least growers there do not have painstakingly to bank up every vine every autumn to protect them from potentially fatally cold winters.
A high proportion of Chinese viticulture has depended crucially on cheap labour to do this, although one of the most progressive producers, Grace Vineyard, has already successfully mechanised the banking up (if not yet the spring unbanking) operation in view of the continued migration from China’s still primitive villages to the super-sophisticated cities. With an eye on the future, in the new vineyards they are planting, they are, innovatively for China, leaving enough room for tractors between the vine rows. The great majority of China’s wine grapes are grown by farmers who have never tasted a drop of wine in their lives. Their chief concern is to deliver as large a crop to the wine producer as possible. Irrigation (before the summer rains arrive) and heavy addition of fertilisers are common. Winters are long and the growing season is relatively short. Vines tend to be vigorous and in some areas may find themselves sharing a plot with beans or bok choy. The overall result is wines lacking in body and vinous interest.
Another deep-seated problem is the quality of winemaker training. Students at China’s wine academies tend to be taught all about chemistry and winemaking hardware but can emerge garlanded with honours having tasted remarkably little, and certainly no foreign, wine. Fongyee Walker, the Cambridge-educated co-founder of Dragon Phoenix Fine Wine Consulting in Beijing, told me that at a winemaker get-together in Shandong the professionals managed to down a whole bottle of Chardonnay without even noticing it was badly corked.
As so often in new wine regions, far more effort has gone into shipping fiendishly expensive oak barrels from distant France than into ensuring that the fruit is of a quality to warrant them. I saw stacks of them at Grace Vineyard, still wrapped in cling film because the 2007 season was too cold and wet to yield wine of sufficiently high quality to fill them.
The vast majority of vines planted are (still) Cabernet and Merlot and it is effectively impossible to import cuttings to supplement the official stocks of French vine material.
The market seems to have been schooled to expect wine to be red, watery, bone dry, often rather tannic and tough (destemming is not routine) and too often less than pristine. Is it any wonder that I fear wine may not catch on in China? Especially since a bottle of wine costs about 20 times as much as a bottle of beer – even though taxes on domestic wine are well under half the nearly 50 per cent levied on imports. Every day millions of Chinese must try their first bottle of wine and be desperately disappointed.
Most of the wines listed here tasted very different from this norm. It seems likely that Cofco’s cosseted new ‘Château’ Junding owes its robustly New World character to its Chilean consultant and Australian-trained local winemaker, just as the 2006 vintage sitting in cask at Grace Vineyard is distinctly fruitier than its predecessors thanks to their new Australian winemaker. The Catai wine, made by the Sardinian wine company Sella Mosca, tastes eerily un-Chinese, just as the Great Wall single vineyard bottlings do.
For years Chinese bottlers were notorious blenders of imported bulk wine but China’s wine labelling rules, if not the controls, have become much stricter. Jim Boyce of the Chinese wine blog www.grapewallofchina.com told me he had seen a label that admitted to some Chilean wine content. Last year China imported more than three times as much wine in bulk as in bottle, enough to fill 130m bottles. If the Chinese are to produce good wine of their own, they need to discover both the right place and the will to do so.
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