The Wines
UK, October 2018
CRAB BRAINS AND CABERNET by Matt Walls
The last twenty metres of road aren’t yet tarmacked on the way to He Jin Zun winery in Ningxia, northern China, so we get out and crunch over the gravel on foot. Consultant winemaker David Tyney bounds out to greet us and walks us through the building site past rows of gleaming steel tanks into the noisy winery. He’s from New Zealand but most other employees are locals. A dozen women in colourful headscarves are huddled over the speeding sorting table, an older man forks piles of discarded stalks, some younger ones tip crates of grapes into the press. Tyney surveys the busy scene. “None of this was here two weeks ago,” he says, “it was just a dirt floor.”