The piece in this week’s issue I enjoyed
most is Jiayang Fan’s “The Spreading Vine,” an account of her recent wine tour in China’s Ningxia region. Fan drives along the Helan Mountain Grape
Culture Corridor (“Billboards
advertising various wineries—housed in faux-French châteaux, sleek modernist
structures, giant pagodas—appeared, like fast-food signs along a highway”),
visits wineries (“The château has stone towers with conical roofs, in imitation
of the châteaux of the Loire Valley, and cherub-adorned fountains recalling the
ones at the Boboli Gardens, in Florence”), talks with winemakers (“Zhang
mentioned that rosés were relatively new to the Chinese market; she suspected
that they’d catch on, thanks to their juicelike color and clean, slightly sweet
taste”), eats grapes (“I crouched down, picked a grape, and popped it into my
mouth. It was astonishingly sweet, less like fruit than like jam or sticky
nectar”), and tastes wine (“A 2014 Cabernet blend I tasted bore out what
Robinson had said: medium-bodied and somewhat floral, it seemed like a
Bordeaux”).
My favorite part
comes near the end, when Fan describes drinking bootleg wine with her driver,
Liu, and his friend, Fatty:
Being in possession of
contraband wine put the men in a giddy mood, and, not long after we left, Fatty
pulled over and Liu fetched one of the jugs of wine from the trunk. Having
driven me to at least half a dozen wineries, they took me for an expert and
were eager to get my opinion. As Liu produced some grimy plastic cups from the
recesses of the car, I remembered a tasting at Silver Heights, where wines were
daintily paired with Camembert imported from Normandy, via Shanghai. The
bootleg wine was warm, and, when I raised my cup, I could see thick sediment
dancing inside. The security guard had mentioned that the wine hadn’t yet been
filtered, but Liu and Fatty didn’t seem bothered. We took a sip, and Fatty’s
mouth puckered. The wine was harsh, sweet but astringent, and the taste seemed
to register in the esophagus as much as in the mouth. As the men drained their
cups, Liu reflected that at least it hadn’t cost them anything.
“The Spreading Vine”
is a pleasurable read – Fan’s best piece since her superb “The Accused” (The New Yorker, October 12, 2015).
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