Raised in a military family that was constantly on the move, American Marc Curtis grew up appreciating travel and different cultures. A career in TV production furthered his passion for experiencing new places and after extensive travels around the world he arrived in China four years ago to set up a business in the domestic tourism industry. Today he operates China Wine Tours, a company that organizes wine tours in China. We spoke with him last month about his background, business and favorite Chinese wines.
TheBeijinger.com
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Republic of Wine
Chinese vineyards are the toast of Shanghai’s finest restaurants, and they may soon come to a cellar near you.
By Charles Foran
At a wine tasting on Shanghai’s famous waterfront, the future of Chinese wine is as bright as the chardonnay.
Through the windows of the seventh-floor dining room at the elegant M on the Bund, Shanghai’s past, present and future appear within the same frame. There is the quaint colonial downtown below and the bustling streets running along the Huangpu River. Across the river glows the Pudong skyline, a lurid vision of a 21st-century Asian cityscape. Joining me this evening to nose, swirl and sip the finest on offer from the Chinese wine industry are the owner of the restaurant, Michelle Garnaut, an Indian essayist and a British poet. We’re here for the Shanghai International Literary Festival, which M on the Bund has hosted for several years.
The Australian Garnaut opened her elegant establishment in 1999, and it has quickly become the most admired restaurant along this historic promenade. Appropriately, the Chinese wines that Garnaut’s restaurant manager, Marcus Ford, assembles also belong to the new century.
Gathering to taste Chinese vintages is itself something of a novelty. Though the Chinese have been drinking wine for thousands of years, only in the last two decades have tastes strayed from the indigenous sweet syrups or the potent liquor known as baijiu, which has toppled many a foreign guest at state banquets. An emerging middle class is developing a palate for the relatively sour Western-style reds and whites. That growing affluence, like the appetite for local vintages, has already made China one of the biggest wine producers in the world. Many convenience stores now stock the cabernets, merlots, chardonnays and pinot noirs that are produced on the approximately 160,000 acres of vines cultivated nationwide.
Full story at EnRoute Air Canada
By Charles Foran
At a wine tasting on Shanghai’s famous waterfront, the future of Chinese wine is as bright as the chardonnay.
Through the windows of the seventh-floor dining room at the elegant M on the Bund, Shanghai’s past, present and future appear within the same frame. There is the quaint colonial downtown below and the bustling streets running along the Huangpu River. Across the river glows the Pudong skyline, a lurid vision of a 21st-century Asian cityscape. Joining me this evening to nose, swirl and sip the finest on offer from the Chinese wine industry are the owner of the restaurant, Michelle Garnaut, an Indian essayist and a British poet. We’re here for the Shanghai International Literary Festival, which M on the Bund has hosted for several years.
The Australian Garnaut opened her elegant establishment in 1999, and it has quickly become the most admired restaurant along this historic promenade. Appropriately, the Chinese wines that Garnaut’s restaurant manager, Marcus Ford, assembles also belong to the new century.
Gathering to taste Chinese vintages is itself something of a novelty. Though the Chinese have been drinking wine for thousands of years, only in the last two decades have tastes strayed from the indigenous sweet syrups or the potent liquor known as baijiu, which has toppled many a foreign guest at state banquets. An emerging middle class is developing a palate for the relatively sour Western-style reds and whites. That growing affluence, like the appetite for local vintages, has already made China one of the biggest wine producers in the world. Many convenience stores now stock the cabernets, merlots, chardonnays and pinot noirs that are produced on the approximately 160,000 acres of vines cultivated nationwide.
Full story at EnRoute Air Canada
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