The Château Changyu Castel (烟台张裕卡斯特酒庄) of Shandong

Discovering the wine region of Shandong

Shandong is one of China's major wine-producing provinces, located on the east coast of the country, equidistant between Beijing and Shanghai. It is clearly China's largest wine producing region, even if the wine industry represents only a small Part of the total economy of this heavily populated province. It is home to the majority of China's most prominent wineries, along with the Tsingtao brewery. Cabernet Gernischt, Cabernet Sauvignon, Riesling and Chardonnay are the most important grape varieties grown in the province.

Shandong covers around 160,000 square kilometers (60,700 square miles) of land, an area that is roughly the same Size as the US state of Georgia. The most viticulturally important part of the province is the 275km-long (170-mile) Shandong Peninsula that juts into the Yellow Sea toward Korea. Just North of the peninsula is where the famed Yellow River flows into the sea after traversing much of northern China. Most producers in Shandong can be found on the outskirts of urban areas, and the city of Yantai on the northern coast of the peninsula has become China's wine capital.

It was here that the first commercial wine producers began to make grape wines, pioneered by the Changyu wine company in the late 19th Century. In the past few decades, the city has been attracting international attention and the Bordeaux names of Castel and Barons de Rothschild have viticultural interests in Shandong. The Terroir of Shandong avoids the Harsh continental extremes of the Center of China and instead has a maritime Climate, with cooler summers and warmer winters. Shandong is affected by the East Asian Monsoon, a weather system that brings cool, moist air from the Pacific Ocean to the shores of the province, causing summer rain.