Diary of a Ningxia wine harvest

Photo by Mike Peters/China Daily

"All hallmarks of a really good wine," the New Zealander says.

So will 2015 be a great year?

"I'm a viticulturist, so I'm an optimist," he says, smiling. "What I can tell you is that very good grapes are going into the winery."

Inside, winemaker Craig Grafton is also sunny-side up. The Australian has been shepherding grapes here into something more exalted since 2011. This season's markers have been in good alignment: warm days and cool nights, quality fruits, low rainfall that extended the season to its sweet peak.

"The jury is still out on whether it will be better than 2013," says Grafton of the harvest that's reaching store shelves right about now. But you can't just replicate what you did before - grapes aren't the same every year."

As he leads the way into a corridor that reeks of CO2 - "that's the yeast doing its work, the first fermentation", the winemaker talks of whole-bunch processing, controlled extraction, refining rates, cold-settling and other fine points of his process.

While the grapes outside are pure sweet wonder, the first sip in a barrel-tasting session is a rude shock to the uninitiated. The wine-to-be is cloudy with yeast, its "nose" funky like old socks, but Grafton and Insley sip and spit with real pleasure.

"It's young. This was just grapes a month ago," Grafton says, with the pride of a father whose toddler is walking two months ahead of schedule. I'm impressed that their sophisticated palates tell them something lovely will come of this.

I'm much happier when we move on to the tasting room to try the special reserve chardonnay and the rich, red xiao feng, the "snow pinnacle" of the namesake mountain and the winery's premium label.