Enoteca Shanghai has added Au Bon Climat, a trailblazer for crafting Burgundian style wines in California, to its portfolio for the mainland market, the company has announced.
Starting from this week, 12 wines from Au Bon Climat including its highly rated Pinot Noir and Chardonnay will be distributed by Enoteca Shanghai, the subsidiary of Asia’s leading wine retailer Enoteca, across its different retail shops inside mainland China.
This would follow Enoteca Taiwan’s move and expand Au Bon Climat’s reach in the Chinese market, as more merchants explore alternatives to ever-more-expensive Burgundy.
“Chinese fine wine market has radically diversified in recent years,” says CEO of Enoteca Shanghai, Stella Xu. “Especially, dramatic increase of demand for Burgundy wines and premium Pinot Noir from other regions is notable. The style of Au Bon Climat, elegant, precisely terroir expressive style, has huge demand in current Chinese market.”
Au Bon Climat translates as “a well-exposed vineyard” a name suiting the coastal position of the vineyards, with its benevolent Pacific fog and cooling breeze.
Founded in 1982 by the late Jim Clendenen in Santa Barbara, which is one of the coolest climate regions in California and ideal for cultivation of Burgundian varieties. Clendenen, who passed away last year, was credited for his constraint in making refined and elegant wines even when powerful and jammy wines were all the rage in 1980s and 1990s.
“With his long blonde curls and loud shirts he was a party animal, a rabble-rouser, yet the wines he made, with admirable consistency, even throughout the 1990s when California fell in love with heft, were the exact opposite of exhibitionist,” wrote Jancis Robinson MW remembering Clendenen.
The winery has been named “Best Winery of the World” twice by American wine critic Robert Parker and “Winemaker of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times.
Enoteca Shanghai operates 13 retail shops across China.
