Rediscovering China

Misha reviews the recent return to China visit.

After a gap of five years, Andy and I returned to China in October to reconnect with our wine distributor, TX Fine Wines, and also to visit customers and host some events. China is an important export market for us and it’s been hard with COVID having such an impact in terms of China’s slow reopening to the world. Things have changed over the past five years and there seemed to be fewer ‘Western’ tourists – even in the busy tourist locations of Nanjing Road in Shanghai but tourist levels are steadily increasing back into China and it still has such an amazing vibrancy in every city. Technology has also taken a huge jump in every-day life with all payments going through phone based pay systems and almost no cash or credit-cards being used.

Our Four City Tour

Arriving in Shanghai on the weekend prior to our busy work-week, we visited some of the popular tourist spots in this city that I had declared a few year’s ago, as my favourite city in the world! I don’t know if it had lost a little of its shine due to some overcast weather, but it’s still a city that showcases an amazing blend of Chinese and Western architecture with iconic buildings from both the past and the present. We wandered down Nanjing Road in the main shopping district of Shanghai and walked along The Bund – the waterfront area and a protected historical district in Shanghai with its grand western-style buildings that were built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The next day we opted for some exploration of the ‘French Concession’ – actually it’s a former foreign concession in Shanghai that used to be administered by the French government from the mid 1800s for just under a hundred years. It’s a great area for shopping and dining. I love Tianzi Fang – a labyrinth of alleyways within the French Concession lined with arts and craft shops as well as places to stop for coffees, drinks and Chinese delicacies. It has managed to retain an authentic and original feel which makes it popular with tourists.

After a couple of days to settle into Shanghai, we met up with Toni Lui on Tuesday morning to start our busy week. Toni is a partner in our distributor, TX Fine Wines which represents a small collection world-renowned boutique wines across mainland China. Misha’s Vineyard is the only New Zealand producer in the collection. Our first event was a trade lunch with sommeliers from some of Shanghai’s most prestigious hotels and restaurants. The lunch was held at the spectacular Haiweiguan Restaurant on Fuxing Road – a prime location in “Old Shanghai” – Laoximen in the Huangpu District.

It was great to see some familiar faces at the lunch including Richard King and Tansy Zhao …who have both been to Misha’s Vineyard! In fact Richard was New Zealand’s Junior Sommelier of the Year when Misha’s Vineyard sponsored the award, as part of the New Zealand School of Food and Wine Sommelier Competition. It was so great to see him again and see the progress of his career. And we met Tansy Zhao, Sommelier for the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, many years back and at lunch he remembered that I’d cooked for him when he came to New Zealand several years back! At the lunch we were also lucky to have the reigning winner of the China National Sommelier Competition Yonex Zhang as well as three past winners of those awards. What a fantastic lunch with such a talented group of sommeliers.

Our next engagement in Shanghai was a Masterclass through TOP/SOMM Studio – a wine consultancy for the hospitality industry in China, and also Grapes & Co Institute, the leading wine education school founded by Lu Yang, China’s first and only Chinese Master Sommelier. Thanks to Leon for some great translation work at this class. We had a full house who hopefully left knowing a little more about New Zealand wine, the Central Otago region and Misha’s Vineyard.

The next morning we were off to Hongqiao Railway Station (an hour from the centre of Shanghai) which serves as the Shanghai terminus for several high-speed rail lines. It’s part of the Hongqiao Comprehensive Transportation Hub that’s also next to Shanghai’s second airport! The reality is Shanghai has 29 million people and is the 3rd most populated city in the world and their transport system is considered to be one of the best in the world.

The bullet train to Hangzhou took about 45 mins to cover the 186km trip – always fun travelling at speeds of over 300 kms per hour!. Arriving into the modern city of Hangzhou, we checked into our UrCove by Hyatt hotel – an entirely homegrown hotel brand built specifically to meet Chinese traveller’s needs. UrCove combines Hyatt’s experience in world-class high-end hotels with Chinese company, BTG Homeinn which is a domestic hotel chain with more than 4,000 hotels. They set out to provide deep insight into the Chinese market, and set a new benchmark for the local hotel industry specifically catering to China’s booming young business travellers. We stayed at two of these hotels on this trip, which were both very good and saw that robots had become common-place for use in cleaning and room service delivery. We got used to sharing elevators with robots who were busy delivering the order-in food and packages to hotel rooms.

We arrived in time for lunch at the stunning new Four Seasons Hotel at the Hangzhou Centre in the heart of the city. The beautiful city of Hangzhou is actually home to two Four Seasons Hotels with this second one opening just 6 weeks ago. We had an amazing lunch with Toni, our wine distributor in China and met the Four Seasons team there. (The pigeon dish – a speciality of the restaurant was incredible!). It was great seeing the Misha’s Vineyard The High Note Pinot Noir on their wine list!! Hangzhao has a population of 12 million, and an economy larger than Sweden. It’s has the eighth largest GDP among cities in mainland China and is home to large global tech companies such as Alibaba Group. It’s known for attracting professionals and entrepreneurs who work in information technology.

As of August 2023 , Hangzhou has the tenth-most Fortune Global 500 headquarters of any city in the world and the fourth-most in China – after Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen – within its city limits. According to the 2020 Hurun Global Rich List, Hangzhou ranks 11th in the world and 6th in China (after Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Guangzhou) in the number of resident billionaires. Who knew? Our evening event in Hangzhao was at Winederful which is a wine bar run by the fabulous Wendy. Such a lovely evening…informal and lots of laughs!

After a morning visit to the beautiful West Lake in Hangzhou, we took a flight south to Guangzhou in the Guangdong province. We happened to arrive during the Canton Fair – China’s oldest and largest trade fair, so an incredibly busy time to be in a city that already has nearly 19 million people!!

We visited the top hotel (in many respects) in Guangzhou, the Rosewood, the tallest hotel in southern China with their lobby level on the 95th floor! Dinner was at the spectacular Black Iron Japanese restaurant on the 107th floor. We met Alan, who helps with our wine distribution in this region and we met with the Sommelier Schubert! So fabulous to enjoy such amazing views with delicious food along with a Misha’s Vineyard The High Note Pinot Noir! And although our wine was on the wine list, it had in fact sold out in the restaurant. However Schubert managed to locate a bottle from one of the other restaurants within the hotel, so that we could celebrate ‘a high note’ in a fitting setting.

After a high speed train, we arrived in Shenzhen – the final leg in our China visit. Our key event on the first day was a live stream for 2 hours to nearly 7,000 people who follow this professional wine education program – that also sells wine! We met Kepler, who hosts the program and his fabulous team. There was quite a bit of preparation for this event and did a rehearsal during the afternoon and signed many bottles in preparation for the live-stream sales. We then had a beautiful Cantonese dinner with the team and then walked back to the studio and finally started broadcasting at 8pm! So much fun – and we sold lots of wine so everyone was happy!

On the Saturday afternoon, we had just one final event to wrap up our China program. The venue was Les Cinq Wutian Cellar where Sol Yang is the owner – and he was the translator for our 2-hour afternoon Masterclass. Sol was named by Vino-Joy as one of China’s Top 10 Sommeliers and is a charming and unassuming guy. We had a full house for the Masterclass and it was such a great atmosphere in this beautiful wine bar and shop.

After the class, we farewelled Toni who had been our distributor, guide, translator and great friend over the incredibly busy but productive week. Andy and I had a night on our own in Shenzhen before heading to Hong Kong the next day on the fast train, to begin the second part of our North Asia trip. We really missed the local knowledge as we endeavoured to find our way around Shenzhen unaccompanied, but finally managed to find a place to eat and which also took a credit card and also managed to get our WeChat payment system to work for return cab trip! We’ll definitely be more prepared next visit!