Taste Testing Yunnan Shangri-La's Xiao Ling 霄岭 Himalayan Wines: Grand Vin de l'Himalaya, Chardonnay, Cizhong Baco Noir & Sentiers de Xiaoling

Nestled deep in the Himalayas along the border with Tibet, it might be surprising to find small communities of Yunnan families of Tibetan, Lisu, Mosso, and Nu ethnicities cooking cheese, making French-style pot-au-feu - a brothy bouillon of simmered meat and vegetables - singing French songs, and even bearing names such as Joseph, Maria, or Anna. These hardy agrarian families also tend French grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and even Chardonnay, alongside now localised hybrids such as Baco Noir, or "Rose Honey," as it is known locally. As might be obvious by now, where much of Tibet is Buddhist, these parts of the flanking Yunnan mountain ranges were once home to the French, and in particular French Catholic missionaries, who first arrived in the region in 1865. Over the following decades, they infused elements of their culture into the lives of the local Yunnan communities.

The Cizhong Church is a spectacular sight in the midst of the Himalayan mountain foothills, with a rare parcel of Baco Noir planted right by its side.

Unfortunately for these French missionaries, things did not turn out well. They suffered as collateral damage amid the intense ethnic tensions that erupted in the early 1900s. Consequently, they were later offered reparations in the form of permission to build a new church, complete with its own vineyards. Yet by the mid-1900s, fortunes turned against them once again, and they were eventually forced out of the region, leaving behind their Baco Noir vines on land that gradually became overgrown. That said, during their century-long presence in the region, the missionaries had rendered considerable service to the local communities, who in turn adopted some of their customs and have carried them forward to this day, including the preparation of French-style pot-au-feu.

It was not until 1997 that Augustin, the leader of a local Catholic community, sought to revive winemaking in the region, backed by government support for the area's economic revitalisation. With the help of a local nun, Yen Ting, who had learned winemaking from the early missionaries, Augustin successfully revived the practice after nearly four decades of dormancy, focusing predominantly on Baco Noir, whose origins in the region can be traced to the early missionaries. Several years later, in 2002, the local government decided to designate a single winery as the focal point of the region's wine industry, initially selecting Mei Li Winery before ultimately choosing Shangri-La Winery. Shangri-La Winery was granted exclusive rights to produce wine from newly planted vineyards in Yunnan, while existing vineyards remained leased to local farmers, who were free to sell their grapes to anyone wishing to make wine in the region. Under the government's auspices, international varietals such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Merlot and Syrah began being planted around the region.

Bertrand Cristau might come from a lineage of winemaking royalty, but never once had he thought he might himself be making wines.

Fast forward to 2012, when Bertrand Cristau, a Frenchman who had been living in Shanghai for several decades after establishing a branding consultancy that bridged Paris and Beijing, received an email from a stranger asking for his help in a remote village in Yunnan. Ordinarily, this would have been an easy "no." Yet, after seeing the location he was being asked to visit, Cristau immediately recognised it as the very place he had been searching for for years. As it turns out, Cristau is a descendant of the Bouchard family of Burgundian winemaking fame. In an act of youthful rebellion, he sought to build a life in China, where he eventually fell in love with and married his Shanghainese wife, with whom he shares two children. As a child, Cristau was often likened to his father, much to his frustration.

Although his father had travelled extensively around the world, he had never visited China. This inspired Cristau to study Chinese at university before eventually travelling to the country on what was intended to be a brief six-week stay, during which he quickly realised that he wanted to remain there for the rest of his life. Cristau later spent a year in Africa before returning to Beijing in 1983. A devout Catholic, he was particularly interested in the writings of the French missionaries who had journeyed to China, leading him to discover a book by Father Dubernard, who described life in Yunnan in fascinating detail. Inspired by these accounts, Cristau set out to visit the places Dubernard had written about. However, because the locations were recorded using Tibetan names rather than their modern Mandarin equivalents, he was never able to pinpoint them accurately. That changed with the mysterious email, whose destination Cristau immediately recognised as the very place described in Father Dubernard's book.

A French style pot-au-feu. Little clues remain of the once presence of French Catholic missionaries in the region.

Cristau would thus make the hike up to the remote village of Cizhong in Deqin County, Yunnan Province, where, upon his arrival, he noticed a particularly familiar scent - that of pot-au-feu. A self-described man of the countryside, Cristau quickly came to love the rural village and returned every year thereafter. In 2014, Cristau was invited to participate in the founding of a winery built around the old parcel of Baco Noir next to the Cizhong Church that had been left behind by the missionaries decades earlier. This would become Xiao Ling Winery (霄岭), whose name translates as "clouds over mountain peaks". The winery itself was the culmination of a decade of research and collaborative work led by Alexis de Guillebon, who had come to the area as a volunteer to help provide education for the farming communities of Cizhong, together with the support of the French association Les Sentiers du Ciel, a non-governmental organisation dedicated to assisting the development of rural communities with historic ties to France, and Yves Roduit, a Swiss winemaker who would later help produce the first vintages of Xiao Ling's wines. 

By 2017, Cristau would step up to the plate and take the helm of the winery. While this might seem fitting given his lineage as winegrowing royalty, Cristau in fact had little to no winemaking experience beyond helping out in his grandfather's vineyard during his youth. This naturally posed a challenge, given that conventional winemaking is already demanding, let alone farming the steep, high-altitude slopes of Yunnan's mountain ranges and producing wine in such a remote rural environment. Thankfully, a chance encounter brought in the help of none other than Sylvain Pitiot, the legendary former winemaker of Burgundy's highly prized Clos de Tart monopole, one of only five Grand Cru monopoles. Pitiot is, of course, a master of Burgundian winemaking, having also authored Les Vins de Bourgogne, one of the definitive books on the world's most famous wine region. As it turned out, he had also dedicated two decades of his retirement to mastering the terroir of Shangri-La. Pitiot would play an influential role in shaping Xiao Ling's Burgundian sensibilities, serving as winemaking advisor to the small yet charismatic estate. As a pioneer - and, to this day, one of only a handful of wine estates operating in these steep and rugged mountain ranges - Xiao Ling has, within just a decade, become home to several emerging Chinese winemakers, some of whom have gone on to establish wineries of their own, while Xiao Ling itself continues to scale new heights. Accordingly, in 2017 - the same year Cristau assumed leadership of the estate - Xiao Ling released its inaugural vintage, the 2014. Since then, the winery has adopted an approach that blends Bordeaux and Burgundy, producing a Cabernet Sauvignon-led Grand Vin, a second wine, a Chardonnay white, a rosé made from the rare Baco Noir, and a Terroir Series featuring single-village wines that showcase the diverse terroirs scattered across Yunnan.

The Tibetan plateaus of Yunnan are only broken up by the Mekong River that runs through the rugged terrain.

Delving into the terroir that Xiao Ling calls home, we must first consider the Upper Mekong River, Southeast Asia's longest river and the twelfth longest in the world. The river originates on the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai Province at an altitude of approximately 2,000 metres above sea level before flowing through Yunnan Province and along Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia, eventually emptying into the South China Sea via Vietnam's Mekong Delta. It is along this river that the Himalayan mountain ranges converge, and it is at their foothills, lining the riverbanks, that the vineyards are found, often in small parcels perched upon or enclosed by steep mountain ridges. It must be said that the Yunnan Province in southwestern China is staggering, covering an area larger than Japan, Germany or Italy; if it were an independent country, it would in fact rank as the world's 60th largest. Now more specifically, Deqin County, a semi-autonomous Tibetan prefecture in northwestern Yunnan near Shangri-La, where Xiao Ling Winery is located, is also sizeably large, covering an area roughly comparable to Burgundy's Côte d'Or. Although Yunnan appears, at first glance, to lie outside the conventional wine belt - the two latitude bands generally considered suitable for winegrowing - its high altitude is what more than compensates for its lower latitude.

Perched over the Himalayan foothills, the high altitude makes up for the lower latitude, producing wines that are highly perfumed and with good acidity.

The region experiences a climate that sits between subtropical highland and humid continental, characterised by abundant sunshine and a short monsoon season. While the overall climate remains relatively consistent, temperatures can vary dramatically between villages, ranging from 3°C to 26°C. This creates thousands of distinct mesoclimates, allowing a remarkably wide range of grape varieties to thrive, provided they are planted in the appropriate locations. "Imagine it only takes a 1.5-hour drive from a place where Cabernet Sauvignon is harvested in early September to one where Chardonnay ripens in late October. This is so crazy and charming—you would not see this anywhere else in China," gushes a Xiao Ling winemaker. As such, the combination of altitude and abundant sunshine produces wines that are at once intensely perfumed and with high acidity, while retaining a distinctive richness on the palate. Cristau himself often remarks that Xiao Ling's wines are frequently described as Burgundian in style, but that it is made from Bordeaux varieties.

Vineyards are typically small and unscalable by nature, often cusped by rocky mountain ridges that naturally limits production quantities.

Yet despite the allure of Yunnan's majestic landscape, the reality is that it remains an extraordinarily challenging place not only for winemaking but for virtually any form of commercial activity, particularly at scale. The region is not only rugged and mountainous but also remains relatively underdeveloped in terms of infrastructure. Roads connecting the main towns have only recently been paved, while many of the routes leading to the small mountain villages remain narrow and uneven. Everything from yak herds blocking the roads to landslides is not uncommon, making it difficult to secure consistent, sizeable vineyard sites or for any sort of building to be done, with the transportation of equipment and machinery presents an additional logistical challenge. Consequently, much of the vineyard work remains manual, which in turn creates another difficulty, as few people are willing to live and work in these remote mountains. It is therefore the small communities of farming families, typically of Tibetan descent, scattered throughout the mountain ranges and organised into villages, from whom the wineries purchase grapes, lease vineyards, or contract to tend to the vines. Interestingly, Cristau points out that these families do not have much of a taste for wines even though the estate bottles some for them after each season as a small "thank you" for their efforts! Nevertheless, farming and harvests heavily rely on the help of village chiefs who help to coordinate the work to be done, with workers taught to send via WeChat any abnormalities of the vines spotted. Where these farmers were once directed to maximise yields, more artisanal producers like Xiao Ling have instead reframed their understanding of how low yields can instead allow for better quality.

"Shangri-la will never be a big region in terms of volume. The available land is limited and hard to access, therefore the only way is to make better wines, not more wines. This is a very new wine region. In fact, like all of China’s wine regions, we need to explore it more to make better wines. For example, we have so many different climates - the Burgundy definition - and have to decide which is the best variety for each village. With 1,000 meters of difference in altitude from the lower plots to the higher plots, we can try all of the world’s varieties, and it will take at least one hundred years. The fact is we have so many different climates, and this is the most important similarity with Burgundy. And those differences between climates are certainly more extensive here than there. We still need a long time to explore the terroir, to catch its specificities and to show its best." says Cristau.

And so getting closer to home, Xiao Ling finds itself in Cizhong Village of Deqin County, seated along the Tibetan Marches around Kawa Kharpo, along the riverbanks of the Upper Mekong River, some 2,100 meters above sea level, an altitude that might surprise some to find out that is in fact similar to France, as Cristau points out. Here, the sun shines heavily for part of the day, only making an appearance in the late morning, before moving behind the mountain ranges, which as Cristau mentions has the effect of producing thin skins on Xiao Ling's Cabernet Sauvignon. Remarkably, as the temperature here does not fall below -2°C in winter, vines here do not need to be buried as is the practice in other major winemaking regions of China such as Ningxia, with then the vines allowed a longer lifespan without needing to be replanted as frequently, thereby allowing for a deeper terroir expression that typically comes with vine age. Furthermore, irrigation needs are also minimal, with fresh water from the mountain occasionally directed towards vineyards using specially designed pipes that enable drip feeding where necessary. Also interestingly, vines here by comparison take about a month longer to ripen as compared to places like Europe, and are found in various villages around the mountain ranges, planted between 1,800 to 2,800 meters above sea level.

The winery depends on local Tibetan families who rent out and also help farm the vineyards, although interestingly have culturally little preference for wines.

Despite the region's earliest start in winegrowing as a practice brought over by the French Catholic missionaries, much of the international varieties found in the area today were in fact planted by the government starting from 2002 when it began working with commercial wineries to help develop the area. As new vineyards cannot be planted (other than by the government supported Shangri-La Winery) and vine material also cannot be imported, much of the vines used by Xiao Ling and others operating in the region come from rented vineyards that were inherited, with additional vine stocks purchased from Chinese nurseries. Whilst Xiao Ling had ready access to the small parcel of Baco Noir planted by the missionaries beside the Cizhong Church, all other vineyards had to be discovered, mapped out and agreed upon with farmers, parcel by parcel, each of which nestled in their own villages dispersed all across the plateau. Xiao Ling has thus far access to 3 hectares of ungrafted vines spread over some eight villages (segmented into close to 30 vineyard plots), and farmed by some twenty-three local families. Red varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Carmenere (which some believe is instead Cabernet Gernischt) are farmed in Rinitong, Badongxicun, Jiunonding, Rizui, Tzekou, Rimi and of course Xiao Ling's home, Cizhong, whilst white varieties, namely Chardonnay, is planted in Hongpo and Jiangpo. Within this collection of vineyard sites, it can be further divided as those in the warmer and drier north, that is Rizui, Jiunonding and Hongpo, or those in the wetter south, which includes Cizhong, Tsekou, Rimi and Badong, with the northern soils featuring more sand, less clay and with no gravel, as compared to that of the south.

Local Tibetan women loading grapes into traditional clay pots for fermentation.

To make Xiao Ling's wines, each vineyard block (and varietal) is harvested and vinified separately, allowing for the individual parcel's character to come through singularly. During harvest, the fruit is hand-harvested - if not at the least because it is impossible to apply machines on the steep and rugged terrain - and then hand destemmed by the local Tibetan families who also help to look after the vineyards. Uniquely, alcoholic fermentation is done in traditional Chinese clay pots - the same ones used for traditional Chinese liquors such as baijiu (a sorghum based distilled liquor that is China's best selling and most prized alcohol, its name taken to mean "White Liquor") or huangjiu (a millet rice wine, translating as "Yellow Wine") - and is pressed daily with 2-4 weeks of maceration, before subsequently being aged mainly in French oak barrels from Burgundy, with a small proportion aged in stainless steel tanks and clay amphoras. Ageing goes on for between 1-2 years before being released. Xiao Ling initially started out with the use of 1/3 indigenous yeasts, and has been gradually moving towards a full reliance on wild yeasts.

With production largely capped by the inherently small size of the various vineyards, but also the extent of the winery itself, Xiao Ling has thus been in the process of upgrading to a new winery with an upgraded cellar and even a guesthouse. The team has also been in talks with the local government and farmers to make use of more vineyards, with a push to go from the current 10 different villages to somewhere between 15-20 villages in the long term, which Cristau believes will also better capture the diversity of Yunnan's terroirs. Beyond that, with a desire to better cope with the climate, new varietals such as Albarino is currently being explored, with also a sparkling wine that has been in the works, giving fans much to be excited about in the future.

“I really feel destiny trained me to be ready to take this job and oriented me to come here. Too many coincidences occurred and continue to support us to be the result of chance. I feel even more committed to make great wines and show the best of the region, including its soil and its people.”

Bertrand Cristau

With all that said, it's time to try some of Xiao Ling's wines!

 PS. Xiao Ling is currently being brought in to Singapore by Marco's Cellar, and at very small quantities! They are incredibly interesting, show great promise, and are definitely worth checking out!

Wine Review: Xiao Ling White Chardonnay

100% Chardonnay, Hong Po and Jiang Po.

100% Chardonnay, made with fruit from Hong Po and Jiang Po, the Xiao Ling Chardonnay is barrel aged with full malolactic fermentation.

This is the 2023 vintage.

Tasting Notes

Colour: Straw

Aroma: Lushly perfumed, it's many things - rich and broad, suppler yet firm. It's immediately leesy, with a doughy nuttiness, that's also creamy, garnished with white florals and with just a touch of salinity. The musky fruits are more subtle and restrained, with gooseberries and mangosteens, fleshy and also accompanied by a rustic side of raw cream and hay. It's altogether gentle yet really aromatic, striking a refined elegance.

Taste: Medium-bodied. Lush, plush and with good richness and great concentration and saturation. More zesty here with tones of passionfruit to go with the fleshy musky bit of mangosteens, giving a more tropical profile. It's backed up by cream and again a whiff of salinity, that of oyster shells, that wraps around a concentrated core of passionfruit pie filling encased in soft dough. The acidity is incredibly precise and fresh, really well defined too.

Finish: Concentrated still, yet generous. It's more of that doughy nuttiness, along with the fleshy tropical mangosteens, mixed in with the oyster shell saline minerality. Seamlessly fresh finish, with the salinity and dried dough lingering, perfumed with bouquets of elderflower.

My Thoughts

A marvellous white! It's reputation is definitely well deserved - for reference, the Xiao Ling Chardonnay has been lauded by numerous pundits as being amongst China's best whites. It's got body, yet really refined and elegant, lees forward with then delicate, zesty and musky fruits topped over a pillowy, supple bed of doughy nuttiness. The acidity here is impressively precise and fresh, with great definition that contrasts against the lush body. Yet, perhaps what is most distinctive is this raw, rusticity of fresh cream, almost lactic like that of sour cream that comes through on the nose, that just makes it so wild and exciting. That oyster shell salinity too is a really nice touch! 

Wine Review: Xiao Ling Rose Baco Noir Cizhong

100% Baco Noir, Cizhong.

Made with the incredibly rare Baco Noir varietal, this comes from the parcel left behind by the missionaries right beside the Cizhong Church. The varietal is said to have been brought to the area by the French Catholic missionaries, and is locally sometimes called Rose Honey. Xiao Ling produces is Baco Noir as a Rose style wine.

This is the 2023 vintage.

Tasting Notes

Colour: Deep Salmon

Aroma: Really creamy, with a striking yet finely polished rusticity, of leather, animal hide and dried herbs over a leesy, dried doughiness with heaps of toasted almonds and toasted brioche. Mix of lightly tart dried cranberries, red currants and cherries, with a deeper richness of baked apples. It has an immense depth of musty rackhouses that is also simultaneously so fresh and evocative. A line of mineral spring water that runs through the perfume.

Taste: Medium-bodied, really creamy, rich and bodied, with the same doughy leesy quality, with still those toasty almonds, dried herbs, here dotted with some salinity. It's alittle meaty too, with the tart red fruits integrating with the brine to give salt cured cranberries. The salty, savoury, herbaceous and leesy body is then enveloped in again that immensely evocative musty depth, with at the same time a bright and fresh acidity.

Finish: The acidity leads the way, bright, sharp, precise, followed suit by the broad richness of the body. Delicate red currants and cranberries, wisps of salinity and dried herbs, with a more prominent wet stone minerality here. That plushness of the leesy doughiness and fragrant toasty almonds carry all the way through the clean and fresh finish. Lingering saltiness, dark cherries, with still that nutty doughiness, and a persistent acidity.

My Thoughts

Talk about taming the wild! The Xiao Ling Baco Noir Rose has an incredibly delicacy and rawness that at the same time feels polished and refined, which makes for an outstanding wine that's exuding a call for anticipation and excitement. It's rich and leesy, yet balanced with precise and fresh acidity, that's further lifted by that wet stone salinity. That hit of toasty almonds alongside the salt cured red currants strikes as impeccably gourmet, at once comforting and also hauntingly evocative. An absolute stunner! If the Xiao Ling Chardonnay is China's best White, then I contest that the Xiao Ling Baco Noir is China's greatest Rose (and really arguably amongst the best ever from anywhere in the world).

Wine Review: Xiao Ling Grand Vin de l'Himalaya 2018

88% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Merlot.

Harvested from pretty much all of Xiao Ling's vineyards, with the exception of a few including Zekou and Rimi.

Tasting Notes

Colour: Dark Ruby

Aroma: Big perfume of rose petals and irises over dark cherries, blackcurrants, raspberries and blackberries, with a touch of licorice and tobacco, as well as some more earthy tones of dusty soil, animal hide, and leather. Also a touch of umaminess of bouillon cubes and dried herbs, with an undercurrent of wet stone minerality.

Taste: Medium-bodied, good concentration here, with mixed red and black fruits of dark cherries, blackberries and prunes, in the form of dried fruit and fruit preserves. Still keeping with those perfumed florals of rose petals and irises, underscored by leather and a slight meatiness and salinity. Bright acidity, with the tannins grainy, yet altogether rather lifted. 

Finish: More earthiness coming through, of tobacco and leather, it's in fact rather leathery, with the thick oak grains now a little grippy. Dark cherries, blackcurrants, rose petals and that touch of bouillon cube staying on. The acidity never seems to lose its shine, still bright and fresh, working its way through the clean finish. Little bit of rusticity and meatiness lingers on, soil and lightly salted breakfast ham.

My Thoughts

This has all the markings of a bigger, more bodied red, yet manages to keep a cool touch to it that allows it to stay fresh and really approachable, concentrated yet without overt heaviness or density. It's incredibly aromatic, with all those dark and sensual tones of fruit, spices and earthiness, with then a streak of umaminess. The minerality too shines through really well, integrating nicely to the cool fruits and the rusticity, sleek and polished yet as we've come to learn, always with this anticipatory cusp of wildness. This still feels young and will readily age for quite some time at least.

Wine Review: Xiao Ling Grand Vin de l'Himalaya 2019

96% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Merlot.

Harvested from pretty much all of Xiao Ling's vineyards, with the exception of a few including Zekou and Rimi.

Tasting Notes

Colour: Dark Ruby

Aroma: Prominently mineral with an immediacy of wet stones and mineral spring currents, which are then followed by a more compact layer of blackcurrants and cranberries, that reside along with the more gentle rose petals and irises, and also that earthiness of leather and tobacco. It's a touch powdery, with a good richness.

Taste: Medium-bodied, good richness and super concentrated, it's satiny and also really taut. Great tension and an energetically bright acidity. Leaning towards tart dark red fruits, there's cherries and cranberries, mixed in with some blackcurrants and blueberries, along with a side of animal hide, rose petals and irises, with also a saline meatiness. It's incredibly perfumed, sleek and elegant, with a tinge of rusticity and a bright, pointed acidity.

Finish: More on dark cherries, blackcurrants, leather and a rather salty meatiness, there's a peek of umami bouillon cubes. Clean, dry finish, with the tannins alittle grippy and grainy.

My Thoughts

The 2019 Xiao Ling Grand Vin comes through more sleek and polished, certainly more taut and with a more pronounced minerality, and a distinctly more fine grained tannin structure. The fruits here are more compact and alittle more subtle, yet at the same time more lively and with more of a drive. The rusticity and the umaminess is also alot more understated, with the wine as a whole much more precise and defined by its outlines. A very stylish red that almost has a modern feel to it.

Wine Review: Xiao Ling Grand Vin de l'Himalaya 2020

94% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Merlot.

Harvested from pretty much all of Xiao Ling's vineyards, with the exception of a few including Zekou and Rimi.

Tasting Notes

Colour: Dark Ruby

Aroma: A balance between perfumed rose petals and irises, set against a wet stone minerality and a bramble of dark cherries, raspberries, blackcurrants and prunes. Wafts of rustic earthy tones of animal hide and tobacco. A more even split between the florals, minerals, fruits and earthiness here. The ripeness here is also more moderate.

Taste: Medium-bodied, plush and rich, really velvety and lush, with sensual dark red fruits of dark cherries, raspberries, plums, prunes and blackcurrants. It's almost inky, yet firm and voluminous. Streaks of meaty salinity, giving it an almost black olive salty savouriness, alongside dashes of rose petals and dried herbs. Great fruit saturation here, juicy yet taut, with a bright and precise acidity and polished tannins.

Finish: Darker toned, with the dark red fruits, tobacco, leather and salty meatiness making its way through, here compacting and concentrating itself yet displaying a good lift from the acidity. There's a slate like minerality, with a gourmet mix of salt cured red currants and rose petals as well. Seamless and polished through the resolute and sleek finish, with fruity tones powering on, of dark cherries, raspberries, blackcurrants, prunes and plums, well salted and perfumed with rose petals.

My Thoughts

Decidedly the favourite of the lot, this showed great finesse with more of a balance of the fruits, minerality, earthiness and florals, here executed with a polished sleekness, whilst at the same time achieving that superb fruit saturation and tautness that really nails it on every count! To top it off, there's that beautifully precise acidity that gives the concentrated body such a lift of freshness. All in all, incredible clarity and complexity, great balance and precision. This was thoroughly impressive and just impeccable!

Wine Review: Xiao Ling Sentiers de Xiao Ling 2020

The Sentiers de Xiao Ling is the second wine from the Xiao Ling estate, and like the Grand Vin, is a Cabernet Sauvignon led blend that includes Merlot. Here the proportion of Merlot is greater, with thereabouts 2/3 Cabernet Sauvignon and 1/3 Merlot.

Tasting Notes

Colour: Deep Ruby

Aroma: Opens rather mineral with wet stone and slick clay, cusped by a meatiness, and then followed by a broadness of dark cherries and cranberries in the form of fruit preserves. With time, it gains in perfumed aromatics with rose petals and violets, accompanied by a light dusting of dried herbs and an earthiness of leather and animal hide.

Taste: Medium-bodied, plush, supple and showing good concentration. Dark cherries, blackcurrants, rose petals and tobacco over cream. There's a distinct salinity that blends in to give salted cherries and red currants, with then a bright and fresh, really precise acidity. The tannins are matted and grainy, with a leathery feel. 

Finish: A continuation of the dark, sensual fruits and florals. More perfumed here with just a touch of cream. More of a grippy, grainy, dry finish, with leather and salted ham lingering on.

My Thoughts

This strikes as open and expressive, really approachable and ready, with also great clarity and detail. It's alittle more contained as compared to the Grand Vin, but serves as a great sneak peek at it, sharing much of the same DNA, with perhaps here just alittle less follow through and power. It's plush and concentrated, with a good richness, making for an easy swap out for any Bordeaux or even a Rhone Syrah.

Wine Review: Xiao Ling Sentiers de Xiao Ling 2021

66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 34% Merlot.

Tasting Notes

Colour: Deep Ruby

Aroma: Immediately earthy and rustic, with freshly tilled soil and hay, animal hide and leather, accompanied by dark cherries, blackberries and alittle bit of licorice, topped with rose petals. It's rich and sensual, with a mineral undercurrent, along with a slickness of wet clay and a streak of meaty salinity.

Taste: Medium-bodied, rich, plush and velvety. It's more creamy here, with dark cherries and blackcurrants, alongside earthier tones of leather and tobacco, and of course those rose petals and meaty salinity. Consistent as with before, a stream of mineral wet stone runs through the inky body, with the acidity bright yet gentle, and the tannins a touch grainy.

Finish: It fans out with a good showing of broadness, coloured in with dark cherries, cherry skins, salted cherries, a meatiness and also rose petals. There's a bouillon umaminess here as it threads towards the clean and dry finish. Alittle more grippy now, with lingering lingonberry jams over ham.

My Thoughts

A really good showing of the Sentiers de Xiao Ling, as with the vintage before, it has this approachable readiness that makes it quite a delight, here again alittle lighter tinted as compared to the Grand Vin, yet showing a good textural complexity, with richness and broadness, alongside evocative rustic and mineral characteristics that makes it rather exciting, and very Rhone Syrah-esque!