(Science20) - China’s wine industry has exploded in recent years, with the number of wineries more than doubling over the past decade, propelling the country past Australia to become the world’s 7th-largest producer. What is driving this fast-paced growth and is the quality of Chinese wine improving?

“They make wine in China?!” is the most common reaction we get outside of the region, even from people in the trade. People who have been to China and tried local wine are not impressed with the most common brands. Indeed, the first time a Chinese wine took home Decanter magazine’s international trophy in 2011, the news was met with shock and skepticism.

But, as Beijing-based wine blogger Jim Boyce points out, Chinese wines have performed well in international competitions and in the tasting notes of prominent critics for years. Regular tasting reports by Jancis Robinson, a leading British wine critic, tell a story of vast improvements in quality, and in 2014, China was mapped for the first time in the World Atlas of Wine.

Overcoming hurdles of the vine

The excellent wine is especially impressive given the serious obstacles to growing top-quality grapes in China. Each of the major wine-growing regions comes with its own challenges and opportunities. In Northern provinces like Ningxia, Shanxi or Xinjiang, summers are conveniently warm and dry, but in the fall, growers have to race against the arrival of temperatures so cold that they have to bury the vines.

This is very costly in terms of labor and puts pressure on growers to harvest earlier than they might wish, so that the vines can be buried in time. Meanwhile, in the East Coast province of Shandong, vines are safe throughout the mild winter, but face rot and infection as soon as the rain picks up in the summer and early fall.

Less immutable than climate, political institutions also shape the progress of wine. The collective ownership of rural land makes it difficult for wineries to establish control over vineyards. Many producers have to source grapes from hundreds of small holders, so that securing a consistent supply of high-quality grapes is a challenge. Moreover, contracts with farmers can be hard to enforce.

The longer a winemaker waits for optimal ripeness to call the harvest, the higher the risk that some growers will prefer to sell to a competitor who agrees to pick earlier.

Yet recent successes show that it is possible to produce good wine even with this complex supply chain. Grace Vineyard, from Shanxi, overcame institutional constraints by establishing relationships with growers, providing assistance with inputs and paying bonuses for quality. In Ningxia, the young Kanaan winery, headed by talented self-taught winemaker Wang Fang, still has to buy in a large portion of the grapes for its Cabernet Sauvignon, but achieves excellent results in part thanks to good on-going relationships with a handful of trusted growers.