Longting: Daoism, Petit Manseng, and a Different Path
A Penglai estate built on Daoist philosophy. Two unusual grapes — Petit Manseng and Maréchal Foch. A house style that does not look like anyone else's.
A Different Kind of Estate
Section titled “A Different Kind of Estate”Longting (龙亭) is small. About 13 hectares of vineyard. Annual production under 30,000 bottles. By Chinese-estate standards it is barely visible.
It is also one of the most interesting estates in Penglai.
The owners, husband and wife Mr. and Mrs. Yang, came to wine after careers in business. The estate was planted starting around 2010. From the beginning, the philosophy was different. Longting did not chase scale, did not import a French winemaker, did not bet everything on Cabernet Sauvignon. Instead, the estate articulated a guiding philosophy drawn from Daoism: wu wei (non-action, or rather, action that flows with natural patterns).
In practice, this meant: a small portfolio of grapes, organic-leaning viticulture, minimum-intervention winemaking, and house wines named in poetic rather than commercial terms (Spring Equinox, Autumn Moon, Pure White).
It also meant choosing two grapes that almost no other Chinese estate works with seriously: Petit Manseng and Maréchal Foch.
Petit Manseng
Section titled “Petit Manseng”Petit Manseng is a southwest French grape, most known from Jurançon, where it makes sweet late-harvest wines and dry whites with pronounced floral character. The grape is rare globally and almost absent from China outside of Hebei’s Domaine Franco-Chinois.
Why did Longting plant it? Practical reasons. Petit Manseng has thick skin, late ripening, and natural resistance to rot. In Penglai’s wet summers, these traits matter. The grape can also be picked late, with sugars and acids both elevated, producing late-harvest or dessert wines that have built-in balance.
Longting makes two styles from Petit Manseng. A dry white (Spring Equinox Petit Manseng) with apricot, honey, and a green-tea acidity. And a sweet late-harvest version (Autumn Moon) picked in November after the first cold snaps, with apricot jam, ginger, marmalade, dried mango, and a finish that runs for over a minute. The sweet version is in my view among the three best dessert wines made in China (along with Domaine Franco-Chinois’s Petit Manseng and Lapu’s ice wine from Yunnan).
The risk: in years with early hard rain in October, the late-harvest pick is impossible. The estate makes only the dry version in such years.
Maréchal Foch
Section titled “Maréchal Foch”The second unusual grape is Maréchal Foch (named after a French WWI marshal). Maréchal Foch is a hybrid grape developed in Alsace in the early twentieth century, with Vitis riparia and vinifera parents. It is cold-hardy, early-ripening, vigorous, and aromatic. The grape is mostly grown in Canada, Vermont, Quebec, and northern France where vinifera struggles.
In Penglai, the grape’s cold-hardiness is less critical than its early ripening: it gets harvested before September typhoons, sidestepping the rot risk that plagues late-ripening Cabernet. And its aromatic profile is unusual — deeply colored, mulberry, smoke, gamy, peppery, with a touch of foxiness (a vinous quality that not everyone enjoys).
Longting makes a 100% Maréchal Foch (Pure Red), aged in old oak. The wine has a cult following among Beijing sommeliers for its uniqueness. It is not for everyone. The foxy character is too pronounced for traditional palates. But it is among the most original wines made in China, in the sense that it does not try to resemble any major international style.
Tasting Notes
Section titled “Tasting Notes”Longting Spring Equinox Petit Manseng (dry) 2021. Pale gold. Apricot, mango, lychee, white flowers. Acidity high, finish savoury. ABV 13%. Drink with seafood. Six- to eight-year aging potential.
Longting Autumn Moon Petit Manseng (late harvest) 2020. Deep gold. Apricot jam, dried mango, ginger, marmalade. Sweetness around 150 g/L residual sugar. Acidity strong, balancing the sugar. Finish over one minute. ABV 12%. Twenty-year cellaring.
Longting Pure Red Maréchal Foch 2019. Deep ruby with violet edge. Mulberry, smoke, game, black pepper, foxy. Tannins medium. Acidity high. ABV 13.5%. Drink with roast lamb or pigeon. Five- to ten-year drinking window.
Longting Cabernet Sauvignon 2019. The estate’s most conventional wine. Blackcurrant, cedar, herbs. Tannins firm. Honest and competent, without the distinctiveness of the other wines.
Why Longting Matters
Section titled “Why Longting Matters”The default trajectory for a small Chinese estate is to copy Bordeaux. Cabernet Sauvignon. French winemaker. French oak. Bordeaux blend. Imitation of a model that takes hundreds of years to refine.
Longting did the harder thing. They asked: given Penglai’s actual climate, what grapes and what style work best here? The answer involved Petit Manseng (for the wet summers and late picks), Maréchal Foch (for early ripening), Daoist minimalism in the cellar, and small production volumes.
The result is a portfolio that does not look like anyone else’s. Some wines are excellent. Some are eccentric. The estate is small and sustainable, not chasing growth.
In a region full of imitators and aspirants, Longting is one of the rare estates working from first principles. Whether their model scales is the wrong question. The question is whether anyone else in Shandong learns from them. So far, the answer is largely no.
The next decade will see if that changes.