Many people laughed at us in the beginning. They asked, 'Why are you spending so much money just to grow grapes?' But they aren't laughing now. |
Quality control is very difficult. We are organized like an army. We have the manager, the engineers and group leaders - each group has 20 farmers growing 10 hectares of grapes. We have a rule that each stem can have only one bunch of grapes. But the local farmers don't understand this. It is very hard for them. |
We came in 1999 to experiment with planting grapes - we wanted to see if we could get the quality. We started with 20 hectares of cabernet sauvignon and merlot. |
We have one of the best production facilities in the world - it is gravity processing. We don't use a pump. If you use a pump, a lot of air gets in and it hurts the structure of the wine. We use pipes, and it flows freely. There is a 20-meter drop from fermentation tanks to the bottle line. |
Wine is imported to China in containers. Many 'vineyards' just bottle wine that they have imported. |