The award was a seminal ­moment for the mainland’s wine industry, dispelling widely held views that Chinese wine was ­undrinkable.

But it also shone a spotlight on Ningxia, a landlocked sliver of land on the edge of the Gobi Desert, and on the important role winemaking has had and continues to have in boosting the economy of what is still one of the country’s poorest areas. Its average annual per capita income was 18,832 yuan (US$2,800) in 2016, in the bottom third of the country’s 31 provinces and ­regions.

Before the arrival of viticulture, Ningxia’s 6.8 million people, 36 per cent of whom are Muslims from the Hui ethnic group, relied largely on animal grazing, subsistence agriculture and the cultivation of wolfberries used in traditional Chinese medicine.

However some farmers realised that the mostly desert region, sitting on the edge of the Loess Plateau, shared a similar latitude with the so-called golden zone for winemaking in the Bordeaux ­region of France.

The eastern foothills of the ­Helan Mountains in particular met all the conditions for growing grapes for wine: ample sunlight, irrigation, permeable soil and a good temperature range.

China Great Wall Wine and Yantai Changyu Pioneer Wine Company, the country’s two dominant winemakers, were the first to cultivate grapes in Ningxia in the mid 1980s, blending Ningxia-grown ones with others ­harvested elsewhere to produce red wine that did not identify the grape varieties.

The industry got a major boost in 1997, when President Xi ­Jinping, then Communist Party chief of Fujian province, suggested as part of an assistance programme for Ningxia that he was supervising, that winemaking could be its ticket out of poverty.

He proposed resettling entire village communities from poorer areas to arable land near the ­Yellow River, which snakes its way through the north of Ningxia near the regional capital of ­Yinchuan.

Three decades later, there are 86 wineries in the Helan Mountains foothills and another 98 under construction, putting Ningxia in a position to overtake the Yantai-Penglai region in Shandong province – which produces 40 per cent of the country’s wine – as the country’s viticulture capital.

A total of 120 million bottles of wine are produced from 38,000 hectares (93,900 acres) of vineyards in Ningxia, or a quarter of the country’s wine production.

The provincial government has heavily supported the industry, spending between 200 million yuan and 300 million yuan every year over the past six years.

It has eased regulations to facilitate the import of 1.8 million nursery stock from France over two years with 646,000 seedlings, and introduced 26 varieties of virus-free grapes to the region.

Local and foreign investors poured into Ningxia to set up vineyards, and winemakers from France, Italy, Australia or South Africa have also made their way to the region.

Changyu and Cofco-Greatwall have opened their biggest winery plants in the region, while Moet Hennessy, the beverages flagship of the LVMH luxury goods conglomerate, is producing sparkling wine there.

By the time Xi returned to Ningxia in 2016 for an official tour, Zhang’s award-winning Helan Qingxue vineyard was already a flagship brand in the region, and had gathered a loyal following.

“The Ningxia government gave us a lot of support, from the import of seedlings to the training of talent, promoting Ningxia brands, as well as offering financial subsidies to winegrowers,” Zhang said.

Winemaking is now one of Ningxia’s most important growth industries, and has created an estimated 120,000 jobs.

It generated 5 billion yuan (US$743 million) in annual sales and 20 billion yuan (US$2.3 billion) in annual output last year. By 2022, output may quintuple to 100 billion yuan (US$14.9 billion), with the region producing more than 500 million bottles of wine and creating 150,000 jobs.

That would put it in a position to catch up with Bordeaux, which produces 700 million bottles of wine every year.

Up to 21 grape varieties can be found here, including chardonnay, riesling and vidal blanc for white wine, and cabernet sauvignon, cabernet gernisget, merlot, pinot noir and marselan for reds.

“With a latitude similar to Bordeaux – which is located between 37 and 40 degrees north – Ningxia is ideal for vineyards,” said Shi Taifeng, a former Jiangsu provincial governor who took over as Ningxia’s Communist Party ­secretary in 2017.

Watch: When Chinese wine got a thumbs-up in 2016

“There is a gap between us and east coast provinces but the gap is not that huge … Our infrastructure development is comparable to east coast provinces and we hope to bring Ningxia wine to the international market.”

He noted though that there was still work to be done to really put the region’s wines firmly on the international map.

“We have planted the grapes and have been recognised for ­producing wine of international quality,” said Shi.

“Now comes the stage of marketing and brand building.”

That has already been a long struggle for Ningxia’s wines – Zhang’s 2011 Decanter award was considered such an upset that some critics questioned Jia Bei Lan’s provenance. It took a December 2011 blind taste session in Beijing, where four of the top five wines tasted were from Ningxia, to convince them.

Even now Jia Bei Lan is difficult to track down outside mainland China. A 2013 vintage is available at The Wine Republic in Beijing for 555 yuan (US$82) a bottle inclusive of sales tax, according to listings on winesearcher.com.

At that price, it would struggle to compete with many local wines from Yunnan, Shaanxi and Shandong provinces, as well as imported varieties from both Old World and New World producers, whose presence in the market has been increasing after Beijing cut tariffs on wines last year.

At the same time, a slowdown in the nation’s economy has had an impact on wine production as consumers cut back on discretionary spending.

Domestic production shrank in 2018 for the fifth consecutive year, declining by 37 per cent to 6.29 million hectolitres, as smaller vineyards found their thinning profit margins to be unsustainable in the face of falling demand.

Still, the outlook remains bright for wine market as a whole. Investment bank Julius Baer forecast last year that the population of wine drinkers aged between 26 and 35 would increase from 48 million in 2015 to as many as 80 million in 2020.

That would make China the world’s second-largest wine-consuming market after the United States.

To help Ningxia’s wines, the local authorities are lobbying the central government to remove a 10 per cent consumption tax and make further cuts to the value-added tax to bring down the price tag, said Cui Bo, chairman of the Ningxia Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

At the same time, the local government’s marketing strategy is to promote wine at the lower end of the price range, lining up five ­wineries to co-produce the He Lan Hong series of wines, selling them at 128 yuan (US$19) a bottle to attract new drinkers.

It is also looking to Hong Kong to be a springboard to launch its products abroad, according to Shi, the regional party secretary, who believes the city’s marketing and brand building expertise can make up for Ningxia’s lack of experience.

The city is the world’s second most important auction market for wine after New York, and some in the Hong Kong wine trade say that using such marketing experience could benefit mainland China’s ­producers.

“You can find most wine varieties in Hong Kong,” said Isabella Ko Tsz-ching, a 28 year-old Hong Kong native and founder of ­Ohmydear Holding, which ­imports wines into the mainland.

“Chinese winery companies should not see Hong Kong as a consumption market, but a market for marketing,” she said.

Some Ningxia producers have already discovered how Hong Kong can help.

Wang Fang, owner of the ­Kanaan Winery, recalled the difficulties her company faced when it marketed its wine in Hong Kong few years ago.

“It was very difficult for us to sell out 5,000 bottles in Hong Kong. It took a long time,’ said Wang.

“But later on when we met foreign wine drinkers or friends abroad, they told us that they knew our company because they had tried our wine in Hong Kong,” she told a Hong Kong delegation of businessmen including wine merchants in a seminar held in Yinchuan.

Kanaan Winery is now one of the Ningxia brands that are better known in the international ­market, along with the Silver Heights Winery.

Kanaan’s wines are exported to the UK and Australia, among other countries.

Simon Pun, a Hong Kong wine importer invited by the Ningxia government to advise on the overseas promotion of its products, said the region could combine its budding wine culture with tourism to boost the local economy.

“The positioning is important. Ningxia’s biggest market should be in China,” he said.