(TDB) - 31 Chinese wines to be included in Bettane & Desseauve's next wine guide.

In the wake of a major tasting of Chinese wines, leading French wine critics Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve have claimed that one-fifth of the country's wines entered were "very good".

The pair were in China to select wines for the second edition of the Mandarin version of the Bettane & Desseauve guide.

Some 173 wines were tasted by the pair, accompanied by 12 French and Chinese reviewers, in Beijing last week. In total, 31 wines were selected for inclusion in the book: 24 red wines, six white wines and a sparkling wine scored the requisite 13 out of 20.

"I think 15 to 20 percent were very good, quite close to the standard found in France and Europe," Bettane said.

However, Bettane did note that some wines were "more imprecise" than others, suggesting that there is still room for major improvement in China.

Many of the wines entered were the first or second vintages, made by producers established after 2012. The more-established Chinese brands, such as Great Wall, did not take part in the tasting.

"They participate less today. With competition from all of these new small producers, they are not guaranteed to finish in the first three places," said Nicolas Carré, a French sommelier who has been in China for 14 years.

Wine publishers have become increasingly interested in entering the Chinese market, which became the world's leading consumer of red wines in 2014. Last year, the first Chinese edition of Bettane & Desseauve sold 50,000 copies. The 2015 edition, adapted to the local market, will be the first to include Chinese wines.

There have been plenty of signs of growing interest in wine guides in the wider Asian market; a group of Singaporean investors bought Robert Parker's Wine Advocate in 2012, and the influential La Revue du Vin de France launched a Mandarin edition in 2011.

French experts, however, point viticulture endemic problems in the country.

"They still need to take steps to produce better grapes. There have been a lot of vines planted and very quickly, by workers that were not necessarily well trained," lamented Bettane.