(Wine-Searcher) - As a new year starts, Claire Adamson discovers some surprising facts about making wine in China.

China hasn't always had a strong relationship with wine: stories abound of Lafite mixed with Coke and a roaring trade of thinly veiled counterfeit wines.

But the emergence of China as a world wine player has accelerated at a phenomenal pace in the last decade or so. China has become one of the world's most important wine-consuming countries, snapping up top Bordeaux and Burgundy with an unparalleled fervor – a red obsession, some might say.

Believe it or not, it's also one of the world's biggest wine-producing countries …

Strength in numbers

It's probably the best-known little-known fact that China is now among the top 10 wine-producing countries in the world. While there were no actual volume figures (the country didn't release them), the OIV (International wine organisation) estimated that China came in at number seven in 2014, behind France, Italy and the U.S., but ahead of Chile, South Africa and New Zealand. This is not a new thing – China has been in the top 10 for the last decade or so, and makes around six times as much wine as New Zealand annually.

While Chinese wine is not yet known for its quality (quite the opposite in fact), the sheer size of the country and the veritable smorgasbord of terroir has winemakers all across the world salivating. Much is made of Chinese investors buying up land in Bordeaux and Burgundy but, at last count, LVMH, Rémy Cointreau, Pernod Ricard, Baron de Rothschild and the Lurton family all have vinous interests in China. Touché.

The long way round

Until recently, Chinese people have traditionally looked toward beer and baijiu to slake their thirsts. But a fermented alcoholic beverage made from grapes has been enjoyed by locals in the Xinjiang province of far-west China for close to 3000 years.

It is thought that Greek travelers brought vines and know-how along the Silk Road to the foothills of the Tian Shan Mountains on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert. The basin here is truly extreme: it's one of the lowest points on earth, and is further from the ocean than anywhere else on earth. But miraculously, it is fertile when irrigated, and there is plenty of water for this from the nearby mountains. A good spot for grapegrowing, then.

The Uyghur people who live there have made wine in a traditional manner for hundreds of years, crushing grapes by hand, boiling the juice with water and sugar and then fermenting the concoction in a corner of the kitchen in clay pots. Marco Polo described these fine wines in his writing – and he is thought to have brought the concept of pasta back home from the Chinese noodle, making him quite the culinary pioneer.

Changyu Winery, established in 1892, is China's oldest modern wine company, and now one of the country's most prominent. Chateau Changyu is based in the province of Shandong, halfway between Beijing and Shanghai and home to a slightly bizarre, Disney-esque version of Napa Valley that is most emphatically worth a visit. Wine tourism is alive and well in China.

Up hill and down dale

This massive country is the world's third-largest in area, after Russia and Canada, and spans from the monsoon-affected east coast to the high-altitude desert plains in the west, covering steep rice paddies and some of the world's most densely populated cities along the way. It is only natural that some places in that vastness would be good for winegrowing – if they can make wine in Missouri, they can make it in China.

Ningxia is one of the best spots. The province's vineyards are along the banks of the Yellow River in the shadow of Helan Mountain, where the climate is terrifyingly continental but has been tamed into submission. The high altitude and the sandy, alluvial soils count for much, but China's sheer people power is probably the most important part of the terroir. Yinchuan, a veritable hamlet with a small-town population of two million, provides enough labor to ensure that the vines are cosseted in the freezing continental winters – each vine is buried in the fall for insulation and then uncovered in spring.

A Ningxia wine, the Helan Qing Xue Jia Bei Lan, took out a top trophy at the Decanter World Wine Awards in 2010.

There are several other insanely interesting wine regions in China: Yunnan, where Moët Hennessy has a winery near the supposed location of Shangri-la; Hebei, where vineyards abut the Great Wall of China; and the heavily polluted Shanxi, where coal companies are switching to winegrowing in an effort to clean up their act.

Not from here

There are no strictly native grape varieties in China, but the intriguingly named Cabernet Gernischt can join the ranks of Argentinian Malbec, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and Californian Zinfandel as a signature variety. Cabernet Gernischt is widely assumed to have arrived from Bordeaux, and there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest it is identical to Chile's Carmenere, which raises questions about this grape's compatibility with five-letter countries beginning with C.

What's not clear about Cabernet Gernischt – a French grape planted in China – is where it got its German-sounding, but not actually German name. It has been suggested that Gernischt is a misspelling of gemischt, which means mixed in German. So it could be that the vines were labeled "Mixed Cabernet" when they arrived. Why this was written in German is a Sherlock-worthy mystery. Interestingly, Cabernet Gernischt also goes by the name of Cabernet Shelongzhu in China, or Cabernet Snake Pearl which – let's be honest – is way cooler.

China has a few other grape varieties which are endemic, if not native: the very Chinese-sounding Rose Honey; Crystal; and French Wild are all hybrid varieties, thought to have come from Europe, but now completely extinct everywhere except for in the remote vineyards of the Yunnan province on the border of Vietnam and Laos. Viticulture in this mountain area is so scarce that wines from these curious varieties are almost as rare as genuine bottles of DRC.