Ian Dai is a busy man. The winemaker has 30 wines in his portfolio, produced from grapes grown in six regions across China, from the inland plains of Ningxia to the mountain country of Yunnan. He is also a founding member of the Young Generation China Wine group, a collective of around 20 next-gen producers who are reinventing the image of Chinese wine. And he has just started shipping small quantities of some of his wines to Australia, his first export market.

“I love it here,” says Dai, when I catch up with him on a visit to promote his first shipments. “I have connections here [he went to school in Sydney for a couple of years and has worked in Australian wineries] and it’s a good market.

Ian Dai, of the Young Generation China Wine group, is a frequent visitor to Australia.Graeme Kennedy

“Also,” he says, laughing, “Europe is very far away, and I don’t speak Japanese. So Australia it is.”

Like many of the other, smaller-scale, new independent producers in the YGCW group, the wines Dai sells under his Xiao Pu label cover almost all possible contemporary styles, from funky pet-nats to serious pinots, from skin-contact whites to natural-leaning, wild-fermented reds.

This might seem normal to Australian wine drinkers, but it’s a radical departure from mainstream Chinese wine production which, for the past decade or more, has consisted of lots of huge new plantings, mostly of cabernet sauvignon, by state-owned wine companies such as Great Wall, or ambitious, high-priced Bordeaux-inspired wines from international companies including Mo?t Hennessy’sAo Yun.

The Chinese government threw its weight behind the wine industry after an international award win in 2011 and many new vineyards were developed.Graeme Kennedy

“This growth all kicked off in 2011,” says Dai. “That year a Chinese ‘bordeaux’ blend won a big trophy inDecantermagazine [in London]. So the government started to push people to invest in the wine industry and a lot of new vineyards went in from 2013.”

At the time Dai was working as a sommelier and educator in Shanghai, and in 2015 he was invited to Ningxia, one of the fastest-growing vineyard regions in China, to educate employees at the large new wine ventures.

“A lot of the new people coming into the business were not wine people,” he says. “I was asked to teach them about wine.”

Much of the wine being made by these big companies was both formulaic and not very modern, he felt: cabernet blends that would spend three years in tank before bottling. But he thought the grapes he saw growing in the vineyards of Ningxia had potential. So, he decided to make some wine himself.

In early 2017 he travelled to South Australia to work a vintage at Bleasdale winery in Langhorne Creek and, later that year back in China, he managed to secure a few tonnes of Ningxia grapes, enough for 10 barrels of wine.

Dai’s wines are wild ferment.

“I bought a little bit of cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon and marselan (a crossing of cabernet and grenache). I wanted to do some wild ferments, but nobody knew how to do that in Ningxia. All the people there train in the universities to make wine for big companies, so they only know how to make safe, large-volume wine. But I just tried one fermenter wild, and nothing crazy happened. So I make all my wineswild fermentnow.”

The first red he released, in time for the 2018 Chinese New Year, was a fresh, young blend, quite unlike the more mature reds people were used to. Then, after working a second Australian vintage (in Margaret River this time, at LAS Vino), he decided to expand his range.

“I started to think whether I could try to make wine in another region which have a little bit more acidity in the grapes. So, I looked for fruit in Yunnan, where all the vineyards are above 2000 metres and there is a big difference in day and nighttime temperature, which preserves a lot of acidity.”

Ian Dai says there is a limit in the Chinese domestic market for unconventional wines. “That is why, for me, export is very important.”Graeme Kennedy

Each year since, Dai has built a broad network of connections, and is now collaborating with growers across China to plant more varieties suited to his contemporary styles, particularly the skin-contact whites – or “orange wines” – which have become popular with younger drinkers in city wine bars.

“Because they don’t really have a fixed idea of what wine is in China, orange wines have been an easy step [for younger consumers] to take. These days, even Great Wall, the big state-owned company, produces orange wine.”

But there are only so many wine bars in Shanghai and Beijing – and not that many outside the major cities – where the Young Generation China Wine group’s unconventional bottlings are appreciated.

“I don’t see a lot of future for this kind of wine to grow continually in China,” says Dai. “The only places selling a lot of wine are business dining restaurants. And they are not so interested in unconventional blends and orange wines. That is why, for me, export is very important.”

The nomad wines of Ian Dai

2022 Xiao Pu Chardonnay [Huailai]

Made from chardonnay grown in Huailai, north-west of Beijing. Ian Dai fermented this with about a week’s skin contact and matured it in 50 per cent new oak. While he thinks both are a little too much, and he is now dialling back on both techniques in subsequent vintages, I think it works well: it’s a satisfyingly rich and complex style of chardonnay, but doesn’t lack freshness or focus.$50

Xiao Pu Tangerine [Ningxia]

This is a full skin-contact, non-vintage chardonnay made from an aromatic, or “musqué” clone of the variety, which also includes about 20 per cent other varieties growing in the same vineyard It’s a lovely, pulpy, textural expression of the style, tangy and delicious, with a pale-bronze colour thanks to the wine being aged in red wine barrels.$50

2021 Xiao Pu Naked Syrah Marselan [Ningxia]

The marselan grape variety is a cross between cabernet sauvignon and grenache that was bred in France in the 1960s and imported into China in the late 1990s. It is fast becoming China’s “signature” red grape because it seems to do very well in regions such as Ningxia. Dai blends some with syrah (shiraz) to produce this excellent red. Dark, bold, beautifully fragrant, with bramble fruit and liquorice, it’s dense and layered on the tongue, with long, silty tannins. “This is the blend everyone in Ningxia should be making in the future,” he says.$60