(CNTraveler) - welve years ago, Marc Curtis started a business with the unlikeliest of propositions: bring tourists to China to try its wine. “When I first started, I would speak to groups in the U.S. and the first question was, ‘Wait, there’s wine in China?’ and the second one was, ‘Leaded or unleaded?’” says the owner of the aptly named China Wine Tours.

Today, Chinese wine is booming. The Communist government toned down its anti-business rhetoric, which has helped encourage small winemaking businesses, while the new, wealthier middle class has emerged as an eager market. Local production, too, has ramped up in both quantity and quality: In 2015, China overtook France as the second-largest wine grower in the world by vineyard area, with a landmass around the size of Puerto Rico under vine. It’s the world's fifth-biggest consumer of wine overall by volume, per the International Wine & Spirit Research (IWSR), and the world's top consumer of reds, besting heavyweights France and Italy, per Vinexpo.