Li Demei: the professor-consultant behind Jia Bei Lan and China’s Marselan story

Li Demei (李德美) was born in 1970. The Drinks Business asked him for a vintage, in a profile of 13 December 2016, and he said 1970. The pages do not agree on the title. Decanter’s judge profile, updated 8 February 2024, calls him a professor and director of Enology Engineering at Beijing Agriculture College, and a guest teacher at ESA Angers in France. The Decanter China author page, and a Château Nine Peaks announcement that reprints an older bio, call him an associate professor of wine tasting and enology at the same college, and an invited lecturer at Angers. The university’s English page of 17 October 2013 says associate professor in the Food Science and Technology College of Beijing University of Agriculture. Club Oenologique, on 17 October 2024, calls him Director of the Food Science and Technology College. A university news page of 8 November 2023 says professor. The titles are left as the pages print them.

The 2013 university page dates the study: North West Agriculture University, from September 1988 to July 1992. The Drinks Business calls the school Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University, and the decade the 1980s. That interview says he then studied in Florida, and later in Bordeaux, including a short time at Château Palmer. The 2013 page does not name Florida. It dates research at a food and agriculture centre in the United States from November 1996 to March 1998, then ENITA de Bordeaux from April 2001 to October 2002, and China Agriculture University, as that page spells it, from May 2000 to June 2005. The Decanter China author page calls the Bordeaux course an engineer’s diploma in Viti-Oeno-Economie, and the Beijing degree a master’s in fruit-tree science. Decanter’s 2024 judge page says he trained at Château Palmer during that course. The master’s and the Bordeaux years overlap on the university page. Both are printed.

Decanter’s 2024 judge page gives the industry posts as vice-director of the Chinese Wine Technology Committee, a member of the National Wine Judge Board, and vice-president of the Chinese Viticulture Society. The Decanter China author page has the same three, and spells the committee “Technique”. The Nine Peaks page, using the older bio, says member of that committee rather than vice-director, and vice-general-secretary of the China Wine Association and of the Chinese Viticulture Society, not vice-president. The Drinks Business in 2016 names two further posts: vice general secretary of the China Alcoholic Drinks Association’s Wine Committee, and vice general secretary of the wine division of the Chinese Association of Agricultural Science Societies. He has chaired the Industry Forum at ProWine Shanghai since 2014, on the judge page. The author page calls him lead speaker of that forum, also since 2014. He judges the Decanter World Wine Awards in 2024, and had judged the Decanter Asia Wine Awards. The critics’ corner is where this directory files Decanter.

His column of 31 March 2017, “Marselan: the future signature grape of China”, in the series Demei’s View, is the account in his own words. In 1997 the Ministry of Agriculture sent a delegation to France. The visit led to a Sino-French planting project in Huailai, Hebei, later called Domaine Franco-Chinois. He writes that he was chief winemaker there, that Marselan was introduced in 2001 on the advice of the French experts, and that he made the first Marselan wine in China. The first patch was 2.75 hectares. The first vintage was the hot, dry 2003. A Château Nine Peaks page calls him the first chief winemaker and technique director of the Sino-French Demonstration Vineyard. Vino Joy News, on 18 July 2024, dates the arrival: on 13 April 2001, 80,525 cuttings came from France, 10,525 of them Marselan, and they were planted that May. Marselan is a cross of Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache, bred in 1961 by Paul Truel with the institutes INRA and ENSAM. Chinese wine grapes is the variety page here. The Huailai visit this directory publishes is Château Sungod. It is not Domaine Franco-Chinois.

From 2005, the column says, the vine was planted in Gansu, in Changli in Hebei, in Fangshan and Miyun in Beijing, at Taigu in Shanxi, on the Helan Mountain East of Ningxia, and in the Yanqi Basin of Xinjiang. In 2004, he writes, COFCO, the owner of Great Wall, had already taken it to Penglai in Shandong. The area is not one figure. Writing in 2017, he gives over 4,000 mu, which he converts as 267 hectares, most of it then in southern Xinjiang, then Gansu, Ningxia and Huailai. Club Oenologique, on 17 October 2024, says the plantings had gone from that first 2.75 hectares to about 4,000 hectares. Beijing University of Agriculture’s news page of 8 November 2023 says the Marselan vineyards in Ningxia had reached nearly 42,000 mu, more than 65 percent of the Marselan in China. A 2017 national figure, a 2024 national figure, and a 2023 figure for Ningxia alone. They are not reconciled here.

Susie Barrie MW, in that Club Oenologique piece, quotes him: “Why buy a Chinese Bordeaux? You might as well just buy Bordeaux.” And: “We need something new, something different to attract people, to make them pay attention to Chinese wine.” The same piece quotes him that no country has yet declared Marselan its signature grape. The 2017 column had already said he hoped the variety would give China a wine of its own.

Helan Qingxue planted its first vines in 2005. Ch’ng Poh Tiong’s Decanter piece, “Ten years on”, says so, and Li’s column of 15 September 2015 says the winery was established that year. The youngest of the founders, he writes, and today’s chief winemaker, asked to be his apprentice. “This was a request I didn’t take very seriously at the time.” Later that year she finished her first internship at the winery where he was chief winemaker. The photograph of the 2011 presentation, in Ch’ng’s piece, names that winemaker as Zhang Jing. The year he became technical consultant is not the same on every page. In the 2015 column he writes that he accepted the invitation in 2008. Ch’ng’s category note from the 2011 results, the page this directory already cites for the blend, says consultant from 2006. Both years are kept.

He writes that after the 2009 vintage he suggested an international competition, and that Ningxia was not on the Decanter entry form, so he emailed to have the region added. Sylvia Wu, in Decanter China on 12 September 2024, quotes him recalling that Ningxia was not listed. On 7 September 2011, at the awards ceremony in London, Jia Bei Lan 2009 won the International Trophy for Red Bordeaux Varietal Over £10. Decanter’s record, filed in this directory, is that it was the first Chinese wine to take a prize at that level. The category note gives the blend as 80 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 15 percent Merlot and 5 percent Cabernet Gernischt, at 13.0% alcohol. The photograph that day names the proprietors Hu Suzhen and Rong Jian, Steven Spurrier as chairman of the awards, Zhang Jing, and Li Demei. The note on Jia Bei Lan is the longer account. No new score is added here.

His 2015 column is the page that dates what followed. The award, he writes, came while the Ningxia government was planning the next step, and he calls it an encouraging push. In May 2012 the region established a Wine Bureau, which he describes as the first provincial wine authority in China. In 2013 it launched a classification of its wineries. Those are his dates. The Ningxia guide is where this directory files what later critics printed about the ranking. This note does not re-score the estate.

Decanter’s 2024 judge page names three estates under his consultancy: Helan Qingxue in Ningxia, and Tiansai and Silk Road Vineyard in Xinjiang. It says the wines he consulted on have won over 500 medals, including the 2011 International Trophy. The Nine Peaks announcement adds Leirenshou in Ningxia and Zhongfei in Xinjiang, and the estate itself, in Shandong. Silk Road Vineyard and Leirenshou do not have pages here. The two lists are what those pages print. They are not a census of his clients.

The Drinks Business, in that 2016 profile, calls him “the equivalent of Michel Rolland in China.” That is the magazine’s line, in a piece that also records a 2013 vote placing him among its ten most influential wine consultants. It is not a title on the university page. The university’s Chinese page of 12 September 2024 says he has trained people in Yanqi, and that the governments of Ningxia, of Yanqi, and of Huailai have retained him as an adviser. Emma Gao of Silver Heights is the other people profile here: a Ningxia winemaker on her family’s estate, rather than a consultant’s round.

The column on Decanter China is Demei’s View. The English series title is the title of his book, Wine Communication from a Chinese Winemaker. The 2013 university page dates Wine Grape Varieties to a first edition of April 2010, and that book to May 2012. The Decanter China author page says he also contributed to the fourth edition of the Oxford Companion to Wine, and to the eighth edition of the World Atlas of Wine. The university’s 2024 Chinese page puts the Oxford contribution at about 26,000 characters on Chinese wine. The reading list already files the atlas.

The honours the pages name, each with its year. Wine Intelligence’s 10-for-10, in 2012, which Jim Boyce reported on Grape Wall of China on 30 May 2012. RVF’s man of the year for Chinese wine, also 2012, on the Decanter China author page. Decanter’s 2013 Power List, at No. 44: the author page says he was on that list, the fifty most influential people in the trade, and Mike Veseth’s note on The Wine Economist, 16 July 2013, gives the number. The Drinks Business count of ten consultants is the 2013 vote already noted. The French Ordre du Mérite Agricole, in 2015, on the 2024 judge page, which calls it the Mérite Agricole. The Vinitaly International Award, in 2019, on that judge page and in the award announcement. The 2024 university page adds the campus wines. Under his guidance, it says, the Beinong Zhuangyuan range took medals in London, Berlin and Brussels. The guide to Chinese wine ties this note to the rest of the directory.