Western-Style Wine, Taiwanese Terroir: Man and Nature Hand in Hand

In March of 2014, the Golden Muscat fortified white wine made by Shu-Sheng Leisure Domaine took home a gold medal from the Vinalies Internationales Competition in Paris, stunning the foreign and domestic wine worlds. This farm-based winery, which can be traced back to 1957, saw its fortunes transformed. Today if you want to buy a bottle of Golden Muscat White, you’ll have to wait at least five years. Having gone from being a grape farmer to operating a winery, owner Hong Ji­bei says “I’ve been growing grapes for over 50 years!” He leads us into the vineyard behind the winery, where thick-trunked Golden Muscat vines stand imposingly on the slope, their branches winding out along the trellises, writing a footnote to the varied history of winemaking in Taiwan over the last 50 years.

Father and son Hong Jibei and Hong Liangjie of the Shu-Sheng Domaine. The elder Mr. Hong takes care of the vineyards, while his son looks after the winery. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)

Recovering a lost art

In 1999 the government launched an agricultural revitalization plan, including guidance for Taiwan’s top ten wineries. It was in this context that Hong Ji­bei first met winemaking expert Chen ­Chien-hao. Chen had recently returned from studying in France, and gladly took on this challenging mission. “Winemaking in Taiwan was a lost art,” he says. From 1927, when the Japanese colonial government instituted an alcohol and tobacco monopoly, Taiwan had no private wineries for over 70 years. Given the very different climate and grape varieties from those in continental Europe, Chen had no precedent to follow. He was sure of only one thing: the core principle of adapting to local conditions. He opened up a map of the world and searched for a wine-producing region at a similar latitude to Taiwan; he found it in the Madeira Islands, Portugal.

Prizewinning red and white fortified wines from the Shu-Sheng Leisure Domaine winery in Taichung.

Taking advantage of a hot, wet climate

Taiwan’s hot and humid climate poses serious obstacles to winemakers. The quality of the grapes is ­especially critical for making wine, but Taiwan’s climate does not favor the growth of grape vines, which originated in temperate climes. Thus it is very hard to make a bottle of good wine in Taiwan. Moreover the summers often bring typhoons, forcing farmers to hurry to harvest their grapes at a time when they have just started to change color but are not yet fully ripe, leaving them clearly inadequate in terms of both sweetness and aroma. The two main wine grape varieties currently grown in Taiwan, Golden Muscat and Black Queen, are hybrid varieties. They have been cultivated for half a century in Taiwan, but although they have the heat tolerance and disease resistance of hybrids, giving them great vigor, in terms of flavor they have always left much to be desired.

Chen ­Chien-hao chose a different path. The fortified wine produced in large volume in the Madeira Islands provided great scope for the imagination. Chen decided to copy the special winemaking techniques of the Madeiras, first heat-aging the fermented wine and then storing it in a southwest-facing metal-roofed storehouse. The high-strength new wines can successfully stand the tempering of summer temperatures of over 40 °C. And the “foxy” flavor that people often criticize in Golden Muscat grapes dissipates after three months in a high-temperature environment. After five years, the high acidity in the grapes gives the wine a well-rounded body. What ultimately remain are passionate flavors of tropical fruit, candied fruit, and berries.

The Kavalan Distillery produces 10 million bottles per year, making it the ninth largest whisky distillery in the world.

Redefining the age of whisky

The stalwart efforts of winemakers have revealed that a hot climate can be helpful for making fortified wine. But this success also pointed the way to a bright future for Taiwan’s whisky industry.

Whisky, which originated in Scotland and Ireland, currently has five major producer regions, including Scotland, the US and Canada, and Japan. All are located in temperate climate zones. But Taiwanese whisky, led by King Car’s Ka­va­lan whisky, along with the Nan­tou Winery, which is following King Car’s example, is causing Taiwan to rise up into the ranks of new whisky-producing regions.

More than a decade ago, when King Car chairman Lee Tien-tsai proposed his dream of making a whisky that Taiwan could call its own, many experts, including some from Scotland and Japan, were not optimistic. But fortunately King Car was able to work with the Scottish whisky expert Dr. Jim Swan. In particular, in subtropical regions, the most challenging part of the overall whisky making process is when the newly distilled alcohol is matured in oak casks.

The results were far different from what many people had expected. Taiwan’s hot, humid climate reduced the aging time to about one fifth of that required by most whisky distilleries. This has become a unique feature of Taiwanese whisky. “Kavalan broke down the misconceptions consumers had about the age of whisky,” says Ian ­Chang, master blender at the Kavalan Distillery. In international competitions, Taiwan whisky that has been aged only five to six years has often been mistaken for whisky made in Scotland and aged 20‡30 years. Add to this the number of awards and prizes won by Kavalan, and the liquor world has had to sit up and take notice.

Ian Chang, the Kavalan Distillery’s master blender, says that Kavalan whiskies have overturned many misconceptions among consumers about age, provenance, and climate.

Sustainability as giving back

It has never been easy to produce good wine in Taiwan. However, in 2009 the Tai­chung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station bred a new variety of wine grape, “Tai­chung No. 3,” later named “Musann Blanc.” This opened the way for the winemaking dream of agribusinessman Ben Yang. Relying on his instincts and passion for grapes and the land, and wanting to give something back to the land and to farmers, he founded the Weightstone Vineyard Estate & Winery.

Vivian Yang, now the operations manager at Weightstone, grew up overseas from early childhood, but was called back to Taiwan by her father to take on this onerous duty. Following the team brought over from ­California, and starting from a demonstration farm in Puli, she learned practical skills, from cultivation to fermentation to scientific principles, and she also learned to listen to the information nature was giving out and to go with the flow. The main difference between Weightstone and other wineries is their dedication to environmental sustainability. From slopeland water control and soil retention to soil and canopy management, pruning, and harvesting techniques, they took the concepts they had learned and taught them to the farmers who were growing grapes for them under contract, achieving the goal of giving something back to farmers.

Weightstone’s careful cultivation has enabled the sugar content at harvest of its Musann Blanc grapes to rise from 15.5° Brix in 2013 to 20° this year. The ­steady year-by-year improvement surpassed the sweetness levels of most wine grapes, which hover around 14‡15°. This promising new variety can be made into a still dry wine that has surprised many people.

Another area in which Weightstone has tried its hand is in using the high acidity of Golden Muscat and Black Queen grapes to make sparkling wine, which needs extra acidity. Although the traditional method of making sparkling wine is not easy, and the towering reputation of French champagne sets a high bar, fortunately the resulting product won over many sommeliers, allowing Weightstone to become one of the few Taiwanese wines to be found in high-end restaurants.

Vivian Yang says: “Besides climate and the land, people are also very important.” In the Weightstone Winery we see not only the possibilities for Taiwanese winemaking, but also a classic example of man and nature working hand in hand.

Whiskies from the Nantou Winery’s “Omar” range.

Kavalan’s unique cask firing technique activates the oak casks to bring out the flavors that the distillers want to emphasize.

Weightstone’s operations manager Vivian Yang, who returned home to Taiwan to make wine, works in the vineyards herself, saying, “Now I know why my father loved Taiwan so much.”

Another area in which Weightstone has tried its hand is in using the high acidity of Golden Muscat and Black Queen grapes to make sparkling wine, which needs extra acidity. Although the traditional method of making sparkling wine is not easy, and the towering reputation of French champagne sets a high bar, fortunately the resulting product won over many sommeliers, allowing Weightstone to become one of the few Taiwanese wines to be found in high-end restaurants.