China to Promote Wine Brewing at Dalian Industrial Zone?

Considering that my day-job is running China’s largest online marketplace for industrial real estate, I spend a great deal of time helping to promote China’s industrial parks. However, this week I noticed a headline in the China Daily that even a professional industrial zone booster such as myself has to object to.

Hopefully the industrial zone will create something more realistic than this artwork

Three billion yuan will be invested in the establishment of the first wine industrial park in Dalian. The signing ceremony of the International Wine Industrial Park project was held at the city’s Shangri-la Hotel on December 6.

The three parties involved, the Administrative Committee of Dalian Free Trade Zone, Dalian Haichang Group and France’s Lamont Winery Group, attended the signing ceremony.

The park will focus on grape growing, grape processing and brewing. It will also integrate the grape processing industry into tourism activities that are already built on large-scale metropolitan agriculture and urban leisure. The planting area of grapes will hit 5,000 mu (333.3 hectares).

The project was funded by France’s Lamont Winery Group and designed by French ARC Design Services Ltd. Wine chateaus, a Bordeaux Wine Museum, a manor, a castle hotel, a French wine school and a China-French Wine Cultural Exchange Center are some of the structures that will be built in the industrial park,

The project has proved viable by French experts. Grapes seedlings will be introduced from France and planted under the guidance of French agricultural specialists. Well-known French brewers will be invited to supervise wine making and production to create the world’s top-grade wine brand in Dalian.

Whether or not this project “has proved viable by French experts” the whole idea of government organised wine making seems a bit scary. Is this where that Dynasty stuff comes from?