Silver Heights

The Free Bacchus Story

Ningxia sits on the edge of the Gobi. Winters there get cold enough that vines have to be buried under earth each autumn and dug out again in spring, by hand, across every row. Nobody farms wine grapes here casually.

Silver Heights was the first estate in China to earn Demeter certification, which it holds alongside both EU and Chinese organic marks. Getting there meant building a biodynamic system in a place with almost no local precedent for one, in a region that only started making serious wine in the last two decades. There wasn't an established playbook to borrow.

The wines are Bordeaux blends and Chardonnay from the eastern foothills of the Helan Mountain, where altitude and a huge day-to-night temperature swing do most of the structural work. Emma's Reserve is the bottling that put the estate on international lists, and it placed seventh in JamesSuckling.com's Top 100 Wines of China.

We list it because it answers a question people ask about Chinese wine before they've tried any: whether the farming behind it can be checked. Here it can, against three separate registries.