China: Grape varieties

Selecting and breeding table grapes and wine grapes started in China in the 1950s. Before that, all vine varieties were the result of long-term natural selection and manual breeding. The aim of wine vine breeding in China was to breed red wine varieties with cold resistance. Even nowadays, the European species (vinifera) in northern China (including Xinjiang and Ningxia) would be frozen to death without winter protection. The highly cold-resistant Mongolian species Vitis amurensis has been widely used, not least for Gongniang No 1 and Gongniang No 2, which were bred in Jilin in 1952 and 1961 respectively. Gongniang No 1 can survive winter temperatures as low as -22 ºC. The cold-resistant Beichun, Beihong, and Beimei varieties were bred in Beijing in 1954 by crossing muscat of hamburg with V. amurensis.