To the west of Ningxia’s capital, Yinchuan, the four-lane Shenyang Highway pierces a sun-parched, rocky expanse. To one side are the city limits, to the other the eastern foothills of the Helan Mountains, a 200km-long divider separating the southern flanks of Inner Mongolia’s Gobi Desert and arid – yet still fertile – plains.

The Helan silhouette hangs over the horizon like a mirage, its crevices hard to make out through the haze that blankets the sky even on this crisp and sunny October morning.

Roads flanking the Helan Mountain range lead to award-winning wineries. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

“It’s a pity you can’t see the view today, for it makes a very special start to the tour,” says “Kiki” Chen Shu, my driver and the founder and main English-speaking guide of Ningxia Wine, a small company that organises winery tours in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region’s Helan Mountains East.

This wine-producing region was born in 1998, when, after nationwide viticulture research led to the improvement of the desert-encircled area’s saline-alkaline soils, wine grapes were planted over 3,000 hectares of the barren expanse between the Helan Mountains and the alluvial plain of the Yellow River.

Despite its relatively small size, Helan Mountains East – which encompasses subregions including Shizuishan, Yinchuan, Yongning, Qingtongxia and Hongsipu – has drawn comparisons to Argentina’s Mendoza wine region, which is geographically similar.

Having what’s considered China’s most promising wine-producing area, Ningxia has established a provincial wine bureau and invested heavily in vine planting, and now has more than 200 wineries, three of which Chen will show me today.

Helan Mountains East piqued international interest in 2011, when the Jia Bei Lan Grand Reserve 2009, a cabernet sauvignon by producer Helan Qingxue, won the international trophy in the Decanter World Wine Awards Bordeaux blend category.

The Helan Mountains East region is a sun-parched expanse of scrubland. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

“Nobody expected the level that Chinese wine has reached,” said Sebastian Basco, the Shanghai-based Italian-American director of the China-focused documentary Waking the Sleeping Grape (2023), whom I had met serendipitously in Yinchuan the night before my wine tour. “Ten years ago, Chinese wines were considered mediocre. But I don’t think that the level and speed at which they have improved is matched by any other country anywhere in history.”

Cementing the country’s reputation, China became the 51st member of the International Organisation of Vine and Wine in November, a milestone in the country’s engagement with the global wine community.

A rosé wine tasting at the Domaine Chandon Ningxia estate. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

Wine is produced elsewhere in China – Xinjiang, Yunnan and Shandong also have fine wineries – but it’s Ningxia’s wine that is winning the plaudits, with its production “a way to alleviate poverty for a lot of people who come to work here from other [disadvantaged, southern] parts of the province”, said Basco.

If wine production has been growing steadily in Ningxia, wine tourism is new, with specific itineraries now being offered by companies such as WildChina, Silk Road Travel and Lost Plate.

The region’s main tourist draw remains the Western Xia tombs; mausoleums worn by time into large beehive-shaped earthen mounds scattered across a plain backed by the Helan Mountains. These tombs are relics of the Western Xia dynasty, which ruled China from these lands between 1038 and 1227. But these harsh plains were also inhabited much earlier; petroglyphs etched into Helan Mountain canyons could indicate human occupation as far back as 10,000 years ago.

“When I started, in the mid-2010s, most of my visitors were foreign experts working in the wine industry and many international journalists, bloggers and writers,” says Chen, as she steers our vehicle onto a smaller road that runs parallel to the flanks of the mountain range. Barren rocks and shadowy crevasses are revealed as the sun burns the morning mist off into scattered clouds.

Sunset over the Helan Mountains. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

“During the Covid-19 pandemic, my guests were mostly foreign diplomatic staff living in China. It’s only from 2024 that I started receiving foreign tourists interested in wine tours,” Chen says, as she slows down to take a left turn into a side road, along which two rows of tall trees chaperon us to the gates of the Domaine Chandon Ningxia estate.

Opened in 2013 on 68 hectares, this winery focuses on producing chardonnay and pinot noir varieties, and was the fifth of Chandon’s portfolio of six global wineries. The brand launched in Argentina in 1959 and opened its most recent franchise in Nashik, India, in 2014.

I am told Chandon Ningxia produces only for the mainland Chinese market and that any Chandon wine found in Hong Kong is likely to have come from the Australian branch.

A worker who runs the winery’s daily tours meets us at the gate and leads us through a vineyard.

A Hui Muslim woman preparing Chandon’s vines for the winter hibernation. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

We are visiting well past harvest season, which usually takes place in August and early September for sparkling wines such as those produced by Chandon. The best time to visit Helan Mountains East is at the end of April, when the vines are disinterred. From May until June, the shoots grow fast, and everything is green.

Now, in early October, only a few grapes still hang from low vines that will soon be curled and tied to the bottom of trellises to be better buried under the soil, as is customary from November to April. This protects the plants from Ningxia’s winters, which tend to be dry with temperatures as low as minus 28 degrees Celsius.

Leftover grapes hang from vines on the Chandon Ningxia estate. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

Chandon’s estate tours usually last 45 minutes and include a visit to the winery, a walk through the production rooms and three wine tastings, for the all-inclusive price of 188 yuan (HK$200). For 368 yuan, a fourth wine tasting and a bottle to take away are included, proving that Ningxia wine isn’t cheap.

“The cost to produce it, the day-to-day management, it’s very high and hence [the winemakers] need to put a price point that’s much higher compared to, let’s say, European wines,” Basco had explained. “It makes it more challenging for premium Chinese winemakers to get their wine recognised because these prices are too high from an international perspective.”

A Chandon estate guide demonstrates how yeast can be discarded after being frozen inside a bottle. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

Before taking advantage of the sun and sitting outside to enjoy our tasting – I will try a glass of brut, a rosé full of fruity flavour and a sparkling spritz cocktail – we climb a staircase to a terrace overlooking forlorn vineyards extending for miles towards the mountains. Resting on their haunches, female workers in hijabs that double as protection against the sun are pruning the leftover grapes and preparing the vines for the long winter in underground hibernation.

In between tastings, we tour the production rooms, learn about fermentation and are shown rows of bottles in which yeast is being left to die before being discarded.

Back on the road, the next stop is Helan Qingxue, just a few kilometres north of Chandon and nestled below the Helan range. Our host is the energetic Zhang Jing, one of the winery’s co-founders.

Helan Qingxue’s was the first underground cellar built in Ningxia. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

In contrast to Chandon’s large visitor rooms, the 23-hectare Helan Qingxue looks like a simple countryside estate, but its appearance masks a prestigious history.

Opened in 2005, when Ningxia’s wineries could be counted on one hand, Helan Qingxue is not only an industry pioneer about to celebrate its 20th anniversary but also the first here to produce high-quality wines, such as the aforementioned Jia Bei Lan.

Zhang takes us into Ningxia’s first underground cellar, with its lines of framed awards hanging next to stacks of wooden barrels. Her label produces 70,000 to 80,000 bottles a year, including reds such as pinot noir, malbec, cabernet sauvignon, marselan and merlot – plus an exclusive Chinese variety called cabernet gernischt, a red grape of European origin with genetic links to carménère. Helan Qingxue produces only one white, a chardonnay, and only 20 per cent of its output is exported, to Britain, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Dubai.

Zhang Jing, co-founder of Helan Qingxue, with a bottle of the Jia Bei Lan cabernet sauvignon. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

Climate breakdown is having a very real effect on operations, says Zhang, and 2024 was a particularly tough year: harvesting began in the middle of July instead of early August, due to unusual weather patterns.

“Ningxia usually gets 200ml of rain, but we had 600ml this year,” she says. “This taught us a lot. On the one hand, the climate’s getting warmer and warmer, and on the other, it’s getting more extreme.

“We will focus more on viticulture, canopy arrange-ment and will try to work with different varieties, maybe grenache, which could be better suited to grow in Ningxia if the climate keeps getting harsher,” she adds, suggesting the future for winemakers here depends on the ability to adapt.

A wine tasting at Silver Heights estate, Ningxia. Photo: Chan Kit Yeng

We continue on to Silver Heights, whose owners, Emma Gao and her French husband, Thierry Courtade, are apparently away on business. We sample several reds and a 2021 Spring Waltz apple cider in the estate’s large tasting room, its floor-to-ceiling windows show-casing well-manicured vineyards. Besides tastings and tours of the cellar, Silver Heights offers overnight accommodation – a sign of things to come, perhaps, for other local winemakers.

“Wineries are becoming more open to tourists, and some nice hotels are also being built up along the Helan Mountains to support a sustainable wine-tour industry,” says Chen, as we return to her car and buckle up for the hour-long drive back to Yinchuan.

As one would expect of a respectable tour guide, she is sober and, surprisingly, given all the day’s tastings, I am still able to follow her conversation.

“Our harsh winters are a problem, but I think that since a lot of wineries are only open during the wine season, it’s not that much of a deal breaker,” says Chen. “With more hotels, in the future we could even offer more options, maybe winter sports, to entertain visitors and keep them coming even during the cold months.”