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IN THE HIMALAYAN FOOTHILLS, WITH VIOLENT TEMPERATURE SWINGS AND NO ELECTRICITY OR MODERN EQUIPMENT, MOET HENNESSY HAS CREATED A VINTAGE IT HOPES WILL BE AMONG THE BEST IN THE WORLD.
It is known as the lost city of Shangri-La. The hidden valleys and soaring snowcapped mountains in the foothills of the Chinese Himalayas, bordering Tibet, India and Myanmar, are said to have inspired a tale of a secret Buddhist monastery where time stands still. At 2600m above sea level, you need oxygen here to counter altitude sickness; there is no reliable power, and the locals eat yak. This is the unlikely place where Moet Hennessy decided to craft its latest fine wine.
"It's a bit of a dream," says Jean-Guillaume Prats, president of estates and wines for Moet Hennessy, of the Ao Yun wine project in Yunnan province. "This place was not open to the world just 15 to 20 years ago. It's extremely religious. It is villages, extremely remote, on the banks of mountains. It's an extraordinary place in the world that is totally lost and totally protected from human intervention."
So what on earth prompted Moet Hennessy to attempt to make wine in such an isolated and difficult location? It seems it was the dual ambition to push the boundaries of wine-making and also get into the next big emerging wine market that is yet to have its own significant production: China.
"In the world of wine everyone talks about creativity and innovation and doing something new," Prats tells WISH on a recent visit to Sydney. "You can be creative in the label, you can be creative in the marketing, but with the product itself, it is extraordinarily difficult. But we wanted to do that because that is who we are at Moet Hennessy. The second reason is that every market in the world that is consuming fine wine - Australia, New Zealand, and the US - is also producing fine wine.
China is the exception....