Winery Taps into the Chinese wine market

Filippi brand to be sold on far-off shelves
Wendy Leung, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun: 06/29/2008 07:42:09 PM PDT

The Chinese straying from tea as their beverage of choice shouldn't be hard to believe.

It didn't take long after the red curtain was raised in the late 1970s for China to embrace Coca-Cola.

And when the Germans settled into the eastern port town of Tsingtao, beer quickly reached the lips of those used to rice wine.

But a goblet of cabernet to go with the kung pao?

.....

Marc Curtis started the Redlands-based China Wine Tours, which will have its first group tour in October bringing American wine enthusiasts to visit the wineries in China. Curtis said the wine scene has changed dramatically, and small boutique wineries are popping up in the provinces of Shandong, Shanxi and Xinjiang.

"Right now, China is the sixth-largest wine producing country in the world and experts say by 2058, they'll be No. 1," Curtis said. "I think it's going to be sooner than that."

If that's the case, Chateau China doesn't seem so odd after all and as the country develops a generation of wine snobs, Cucamonga wines could play a role.