Quixotic doesn’t even begin to cover it. In this rueful, enjoyable short history of Yorkshire man Chris Ruffle’s ongoing attempts to build a Scottish-style castle and vineyard in Shandong Province, we see yet another laowai caught in the gears of modern China.
The book gives us diary-like annual summaries of progress, production lists, letters to interested parties and even reproductions of the poetry visitors leave behind, all combining to give us a sense of the small victories and small defeats along the way.
But this is not a story of failure. Treaty Port is still going, and the castle housing hotel and restaurant draws curious visitors from afar, as well as inevitably appearing in wedding photos.
Ruffle is made of stern stuff; he bemoans his mistakes and innocence (looking back at his early ideas, he comments: “Ah, so idealistic, so naive...”) but remains always phlegmatic and determined to move forward.
He has a typically sharp but nonbitter definition of the ‘mei wenti’ one village head liked to reassure him with: “This did not actually mean that the problem would be overcome, but it made everyone feel better.”
It clearly helps that this has been a heroic sideline rather than his sole means of supporting himself (in real life he is the CEO of an investment firm). And he is no starry-eyed China neophyte – he knew there would be plenty of bumps along the way. (Ruffle is an Asia pro and Shanghai resident who first started working in Beijing in 1983 and has had stints in Taipei, Hong Kong and Tokyo.) His wife, from Taiwan, is his business partner in the vineyard and castle, and clearly a settling influence and a hardheaded businesswoman.
The book is probably the least pretentious ever written about winemaking: “Hundreds of tons of fertilizer were ploughed into the land; I signed one check for 600 tons of chicken shit. At times it looked like a bad day on the Somme.”
Either Ruffle or his publisher also has a great eye for the telling quote. “Disaster teaches us humility.” – St. Anselm. “Good judgment comes from experience, and experience – well, that comes from poor judgment.” – A.A. Milne.
Things go wrong in cascades of disaster. People borrow money and disappear; foreign consultants jack up their prices then quit, leaving Ruffle in the lurch; workers build as they are used to doing, rather than as this strange new structure demands; the weather does not cooperate, and drowns most of a harvest. Steel tanks are delivered late with faulty parts; accounts are frozen.
Even the more controllable aspects of the project can be confounding: “On one day, back in Yorkshire, I proudly entered the website address, to show my parents what we had been up to, only to find a blank page telling the that the website had been hacked, in Turkish.”
But wine is made! Less than hoped, often not as well as hoped, but real wine. The vineyard, named Treaty Port as a callback to the colonial days of nearby Yantai, has succeeded in its ‘decent wine’ goal more than in its ‘turn a profit’ goal, and apparently has a good red and an excellent white that blends Chardonnay and Viognier.
One of Ruffle’s goals is to make wines that go well with Chinese food, specifically hongshao rou; another is to encourage more people to try white wine in a country where red rules.
Ruffle is an enthusiast – as one would have to be – and in his early correspondence with possible partners and consultants, his keenness is persuasive. “I remember you once said that you would like to build a Scottish castle in California. Well, this is not California, but it is a beautiful spot, looking down towards a lake over a valley full of orchards of apples, peaches and apricots.”
The big boys have not been far behind. In fact, Domaines Barons de Rothschild, better known as Lafite, set up their own vineyard just up the road. This turns out to be useful, and Ruffle gets some valuable feedback and sincere cooperation. But it’s a reminder that it’s a hard life for a tiny self-funded operation doing everything from scratch.
China has quickly achieved wine relevance, and now it seeks (and through operations like Grace Vineyards is gaining) respect. Chinese people are the biggest consumers of red wine in the world, at around two billion bottles a year, much of it Bordeaux.
China also has the second largest area of land dedicated to wine growing. But Ruffle got in early, and was dealing with workers and local leaders still unfamiliar with the process. More recently, plans for new roads have been cramping his style.
Ruffle is left at least with a hard-won optimism, with plenty of excellent stories to tell. This charming though often gruesome little tome is another quirky gem from Earnshaw Books.
Chris Ruffle: A Decent Bottle of Wine in China (Earnshaw Books) is available at Amazon and Earnshaw Books.
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