Taiwan’s award-winning winemaker aims to revive fading tradition
Standing amid rows of metal-bound barrels in a winery, Chen Chien-hao holds up a glass of wine to scrutinise its golden hue.
Well might the bespectacled 52-year-old cheer after the purple and white wines he helped develop in central Taiwan took gold medals at a prestigious competitors in Paris this yr.
“I’m initiating a revolution called the Taiwan wine spirit renaissance,” Chen advised Reuters, describing his efforts to rejuvenate a convention that has practically died out on the sub-tropical island.
“We are trying to give new life to Taiwan’s wine culture,” he added. “Because now we have new equipment, new wine-making techniques, we will revive this culture.”
Hung Chi-pei, 72, the proprietor of the grape farm transport the harvest grapes with Chen Chien Hao in the back of the cart at Shu Sheng Leisure Domaine in Taichung, Taiwan, July 20, 2020.
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Taiwan is famed for a thriving meals scene centred on conventional night time markets that draw flocks of vacationers, and it makes an award-winning whisky, Kavalan, however is scarcely identified to wine fans.
ALSO SEE | PHOTOS: Taiwan’s award-winning winemaker goals to revive fading custom
Asian shoppers in all probability know the island finest for Kaoliang, a sorghum-based firewater that tends to win few followers past the area.
Until 2002, alcohol manufacturing was a authorities monopoly that stored out non-public corporations, yielding wine that was “very local”, for home consumption, stated Chen.
Now the image is ready to vary, after Chen labored with grower Hung Chi-pei on the Shu-sheng Leisure Domaine in Taichung to develop the wines that took laurels at France’s Vinalies Internationales competitors that resulted in March.
Hung Chi-pei, 72, the proprietor of the grape farm take a break from harvesting grapes at Shu Sheng Leisure Domaine in Taichung, Taiwan, July 20, 2020.
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REUTERS
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“Of course I was very happy. I never expected this and didn’t know we would win,” stated Hung, standing in entrance of the vines on the winery that dates from 1957, and the place barrels are stacked beside a conventional red-walled shrine.
Workers plucked bunches of inexperienced and purple grapes, sorting them earlier than inserting the fruit on metal conveyors to be crushed.
Just 6,000 bottles are produced yearly of the award-winning wines, primarily based on a Black Queen varietal first developed by Japanese scientists, and priced at T$3,000 ($102) every, or far past most imported wine accessible in Taiwan.
Competitions provide a platform to spice up worldwide visibility, added Chen, who studied wine-making strategies at France’s University of Burgundy.
“The style of the wine has to have local authenticity and it needs to meet certain standards. That’s why I always think that we need to prove our quality through competitions.”
(This v story has been printed from a wire company feed with out modifications to the textual content. Only the headline has been modified.)
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