vineyard visit

On a day trip organised by our apartment, we visited the vineyard owned by Dragon Seal(a Chinese red wine brand) in Hualai County. Apart from wine grapes for their production, they also planted table grapes for tourists like us! each of us had a "free ration" of 3kg each. But being slack as usual, we cut only 7 kg amongst the 4 of us adults.
the wine grapes like this Chardonnay were in a tight compact bunch. must be selected for this feature for ease of processing. We tried the final product later at the wine tasting session. It was quite nice, Robina liked the smooth and plesant Osmanthus fragrance. We bought a bottle in the end!
fruit grapes like this local variety. the skin comes off quite easily when peeled. or you can pop the whole grape inside your mouth and spit out the skin and seeds.
Boon Peng and a sugar-loaded Jovien (clutching her grape-flavoured lollipop)
back in town, we visited their factory and cellar. Rows and rows of oak barrels. even the air in the cellar was permeated by an intoxicating aroma of the wine.
Red wine was apparently not a recent phenomenon in China. back in the sixties, state banquets were serving red wine (see the bottle on the right, it's not soya sauce). Premier Zhou Enlai hosting Ho Chi Min in the 1960s.