People have talked up the modern-day Chinese wine revolution before. I’ve read sporadically positive things about some of the wines, too, and, though I’ve never been to China, I’ve tasted and liked some of the (relatively few) bottles that have ended up in the UK. But until a couple of weeks ago, I’d never heard about it with quite the same level of enthusiasm as British-based Canadian importer and Master of Wine Michael Palij talks about the best wines of the country’s southwestern, Himalayan Yunnan province.

Typically, as Palij himself says, praise for Chinese wine beyond the country’s borders tends to come heavily caveated, slightly condescending: “This is pretty good… for China.” My experience has been that, while the wines have often been perfectly good, even exciting at times, they’ve always been expensive in the context, and never as good as the (generally French) originals that have inspired them. Ultimately, I’d filed them away as a curiosity, something to look out for in the coming years, but for now best tried in the same spirit that mountaineers approach another Himalayan adventure: because they’re there.

But according to Palij, it’s time for a rethink. Having recently got involved as a senior adviser with specialist Chinese wine importer Vinum Eurus, there’s naturally an element of “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?” But Palij is a respected figure in the British wine trade and his import business, Winetraders, has long been known as a source of fine Italian wine producers. When he gets behind a producer (he also does Spain, Germany, Australia and South America), people tend to listen. So, when an invite came in to join him to taste “China’s emerging terroirs” at the Institute of Masters of Wine just down the road from Battersea Power Station last month, my interest was piqued.

The cherry-picked highlights Palij talked me through offered a mini-tour of China’s six main winemaking regions. I’m not sure I’ll ever completely fall in love with marselan grape variety, a red French cross of cabernet sauvignon and grenache (widely planted to less-than-thrilling effect in the Languedoc) that has become one of Chinese wine’s main attractions. But the robustly sweet-fruited, big-boned, high-alcohol (15.5% abv) Fei Tswei Reserve Marslean 2020 (￡56, Vinum Eurus) suggested it can work very well in the fast-developing northern region Ningxia. From the same region, I was also taken with the sunny, soft tropically fruited quality (and affordable price) of Xiban Chardonnay 2023 (￡16, the Wine Society).

Other highlights included the textured and pithy Longting Reserve Sea Breeze Petit Manseng Dry White 2023 (￡46, Vinum Eurus) from northeasterly Shandong, and the mature, soft, deeply scented Napa Valley cabernet-like Domaine Franco Chinois Réserve Red 2014 (￡82, Amathus) from the Hebei region near Beijing. It’s this region where, Palij says, modern Chinese wine really began to get going.

My two favourite wines were both 100% cabernet sauvignon reds from the remote, steeply sloped, high-altitude vineyards of Yunnan. The gorgeously pure, fragrant Zaxee 2560 Red 2021 (￡73, Vinum Eurus) and the exquisitely, seamlessly stylish Célèbre 2018 (￡190, Vinum Eurus) are undeniably expensive. They are most likely to find most of their buyers in China’s burgeoning middle and upper classes. But alongside wines from outside the Vinum Eurus portfolio such as Australian producer Penfolds’s CWT releases and luxury goods behemoth LVMH’s Ao Yun, they certainly support Palij’s assertion that “the quality coming from Yunnan is fucking mind-blowing, crazy, crazy good.”