The Climate
“It’s not about soil,” insisted Prats, “but about how many hours of sunshine you have and what the cycle of weather is.”
Thanks to the altitude, the climate is dry and cool, but because of shadows from the mountains, there’s sunlight only from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The growing cycle is 160 days from flowering to harvest, longer than the 120 in Bordeaux. “Think of it like slow cooking,” explained Prats. “Sunlight over a longer period of time creates intensity and tannins that are very, very silky.” The soil is gravel that washed down from the mountains.
“But making wine there is a logistical nightmare,” Prats admitted. From Shangri-La, visitors must climb into a four-wheel-drive vehicle and drive four to five hours on a narrow, treacherous road through a mountain pass at 14,000 feet. He showed me photos of getting caught in a snowstorm en route. Carrying bottles of oxygen in the car in case of dizziness, he said, is essential.
An Uphill Battle
Maxence Dulou, the estate manager from Bordeaux, faces other challenges: There’s no electricity on the farms, and tenders use yaks instead of tractors. Everything is organic and has to be done by hand.
For the first vintage, the fermentation tanks didn’t arrive; the truck driver bringing them had ended up in jail after running over someone, and the truck and tanks were impounded. So the grapes were fermented in a rented facility in the kind of ceramic jars used to create the potent Chinese liquor baijiu.
The winery in Adong, the highest village at 8,500 feet, was finally completed in the spring of 2014.
Why did a luxury company known for elegant champagnes, sophisticated handbags, and ethereal perfumes decide to take on the challenge of making great wine in such a remote region of China?
Prats, former director of Château Cos d’Estournel in Bordeaux, reminds me that Moët Hennessy went to Argentina in 1959 and was the first French company to invest in Napa, back in 1973.
The wine will debut at VinExpo Hong Kong in May and in Europe in June, with the official China launch on June 6 at the French embassy in Beijing. Only one-third of the bottles are reserved for China, but Prats has already received Chinese offers to buy the entire production.
Moët Hennessy has earmarked 500 cases for the U.S.; the wine will arrive at New York wine merchant Sherry-Lehmann in September and will be carried in three shops in Washington, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.