Château Lafite reveals name of its Chinese wine

Château Lafite owner, Domaines Barons de Rothschild, has revealed the name and release date of its inaugural vintage from its wine estate in China.

Called Long Dai, the 2017 vintage from the property – Domaine de Long Dai – will be available to buy on 19 September this year, although the price has yet to be confirmed.

The wine is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Marselan and Cabernet Franc from vines planted in 2011 on terraced slopes in the granite soils of the Qiu Shan Valley, which is located in the Shandong province of north-eastern China.

Although 30 hectares have been planted at the property, 25ha of the estate is currently in production. Along with the grapes mentioned above, Domaine de Long Dai includes Syrah, Merlot and Alicante Bouschet.

The wine being released this autumn has spent 18 months in French oak barriques from the Tonnellierie des Domaines cooperage in Pauillac, and 2,500 cases have been produced from this inaugural vintage.

According to Jean-Guillaume Prats, who is CEO of DBR (Lafite), Long Dai will be distributed in the Chinese market exclusively by Pernod Ricard China, with whom DBR (Lafite) has reached a long-term partnership.

While the product will be available to purchase in China starting from mid-September this year, Prats said that customers will have to wait “until the end of November to receive their precious bottles as the wine will have to rest once in the bottle a little longer to be perfectly ready.”

As for countries outside Long Dai’s domestic market, Prats noted that “the distribution on the export markets will be addressed at a later stage in early 2020.”

As previously reported by the drinks business, the project was started in 2008, initially a joint-venture between DBR and China’s conglomerate CITIC group in the country’s eastern Shandong province.

The estate was named Domaine de Penglai, after the city of Penglai on the Shandong Peninsula close to where it’s situated.

Back in 2017, we broke news that Lafite was hoping to release the first wine from the vineyard in 2018 but this plan clearly fell through.

Then, in 2018 DBR and CITIC parted company but Lafite carried on with the project.

A stylised map of DBR Lafite’s Chinese domaine