Emma Gao of Silver Heights: the Bordeaux-trained winemaker behind Ningxia’s family estate

Jancis Robinson’s essay of 29 November 2012, “Emma Gao – a story of wine today”, is the plain account. Emma Gao (高源, Gāo Yuán) was born and raised in Yinchuan. After literature, Robinson writes, she studied economic agriculture in what was then Leningrad, where she moved with her father at the end of the Soviet era. He then spent several weeks in France and, in her words, “began to appreciate how wine can be a civilising influence”. Robinson writes that this led the family to start a winery, and that she worked for a while for Torres’ distribution business in China. This directory files the estate as Silver Heights (银色高地, Yínsè Gāodì), in Ningxia.

The pages do not date that trip the same way. Robinson gives no year. Bernice Chan, in the South China Morning Post on 7 July 2017, quotes Gao: in 1996 her father went to France and Germany to learn viticulture, and came back a year later to plant. An FBIF 2023 speaker page has Gao Lin (高林) cultivating in Ningxia from 1997, and in France and Germany the following year. The timeline files the region’s planting under the late 1990s.

The training is not in Robinson’s order. The first taste was at 22, in a class at Orange, in Provence. Gao says “I couldn’t appreciate it.” In 1999 she was in logistics for a Korean export company, and her father asked her to study French and winemaking in France. Jean-Baptiste Ancelot’s interview in The Drinks Business, 29 October 2014, puts Orange before Bordeaux, four years in France, then 2004 making wine in Xinjiang and sales in Shanghai. After three years at an industrial winery, her father told her to come to Ningxia, buy tanks and build a small cellar, on a plot under a hectare. She says the 2007 production was recognised, and that in 2009 Torres China helped name Silver Heights. She dates her Torres job, as training manager, to 2008 and 2009. Robinson places that job before Bordeaux, and does not mention Orange, Xinjiang or Shanghai.

Bordeaux is where the accounts meet, apart from a job title. Robinson writes that she qualified as an oenologist at Bordeaux University’s wine faculty, worked at Château Calon-Ségur in St-Estèphe, and married its maitre-de-chai, Thierry Courtade. In 2012, she writes, he had only just started living in China. Mark Graham, in Decanter China on 17 May 2013, calls the school the Ecole d’Oenologie and calls Courtade the winemaker at Calon-Ségur.

The winery Robinson saw was “basically a series of small sheds” on a family allotment in the Yinchuan suburbs. The family’s vines were 15 hectares of mature Carmenère, locally Cabernet Gernischt, plus bought-in grapes. Summit 2007, and especially 2008, tasted in Beijing in 2010, were what first drew her to Ningxia. In rainier vintages after 2009, Robinson writes, Gao was frustrated by the bought-in Cabernet Sauvignon, about half the fruit, and the family planted a second vineyard. The 2014 interview says they had planted 40 hectares in total, in the mountains. The FBIF page gives a 1,000 mu estate in the Helan Mountain foothills, acquired in 2014. Wang, in Vino Joy News on 21 August 2019, says about 1,000 mu, roughly 70 hectares. The 3 September 2023 piece says 70 hectares.

Ancelot puts the vines at about 1,200 metres and about 200 mm of rain, and says they are buried in winter. Sarah Kemp’s page for The Wine Conversation gives 1,100 to 1,300 metres, and 2012 imports of Pinot Noir, Sangiovese and Syrah with the Cabernets and Merlot. In Robinson’s essay the father was 70, so Emma and her mother bent each vine and he shovelled the soil on. She calls Gao “the most naturally vivacious wine producer I have ever met”, and quotes her: “My feeling for winemaking stems in large part from my deep knowledge of the complex geological and social terroir of northern Ningxia, something I carry in my bones.”

Graham writes that the winery could make 40,000 bottles a year, that the 2012 vintage would be 40,000, and that the aim was 100,000. The Drinks Business in 2014 still says 40,000 a year. Vino Joy News on 3 September 2023 says up to 200,000. Graham also reports a supplier using a similar name on mass-produced wine. The 2014 interview adds Emma’s Reserve, made only in great vintages. The 2023 list runs from Last Warrior through The Summit to Emma’s Reserve, plus Jiayuan and a sparkling wine, Bloom. The critics’ corner holds a retailer’s James Suckling score for Jiayuan Marselan 2023, and the number is not copied here.

Wang, on 21 August 2019, reports no correction juice and no filtration from 2007, a 2012 trial of indigenous yeast without sulphur that failed in Shanghai’s summer heat, and a conversion stepped up from 2015 after biodynamic visits in southern France and Burgundy. Gao links that work to the 24 solar terms and to Tai Chi. Wang’s piece of 3 September 2023, and the FBIF page, put the start in 2017. Six years, the later piece says, converted 70 hectares, with Chinese and EU organic certificates already held. Silver Heights was then, it says, the first Chinese winery certified biodynamic by Demeter, for agricultural production, announced on WeChat. The father is named Lin Gao, which is Gao Lin. Kemp’s page still has the work unfinished. The 2019 piece says Emma’s Reserve 2009 was still Robinson’s highest-rated Chinese wine, and prints no score. This page does not supply one. A retailer’s 2010 claim of that rank stays unchecked on the critics’ corner.

Jane Anson, in Decanter, last updated 26 June 2019, names Emma Gao’s Silver Heights and Zhang Jing’s Chateau Helan Qingxue among Ningxia’s renowned boutique wineries. This directory files the second estate as Helan Qingxue. The note on Jia Bei Lan is the other article here. The FBIF page says the World Atlas of Wine featured Silver Heights, which the reading list already says of the China chapter. No visit is published on the estate site. The visit notes list Silver Heights with the Ningxia estates that have no confirmed booking page. Write to the winery first. The guide to Chinese wine ties this note to the rest of the directory.