Ningxia: Estates You Should Not Skip
The seven estates I have written about so far form the core narrative of Ningxia’s boutique scene. But this is a region with more than 130 working wineries. Several others deserve a paragraph each. They represent angles I haven’t yet shown, scale done well, foreign capital experimenting, social mission, the next generation.
Xige Estate
Section titled “Xige Estate”If a single estate represents the ambition of Ningxia’s new generation, it is Xige.
The owner, Zhang Yanzhi, has the most commercial instinct of any new-generation Ningxia winemaker. The estate sits in Qingtongxia, around Pigeon Mountain, holding over 2,000 hectares of vineyards, one of the largest single-estate vineyards in China, possibly the largest. The most valuable parcels were planted in 1997, the same year as Legacy Peak’s original Cabernet.
In 2025, Xige’s N.28 Marselan 2020 was named James Suckling’s Top Chinese Wine of the Year. Marselan in Xige’s hands has become a calling card. Earlier, Xige wines had already appeared at state banquets.
Xige’s model differs from the boutique profiles covered earlier in this publication: it pursues quality and scale simultaneously. This has generated real debate in the Chinese wine trade, does scale necessarily dilute quality? Xige’s current answer is not necessarily. But maintaining management consistency across 2,000+ hectares is something the estate will need to keep proving over time.
Changyu Moser XV
Section titled “Changyu Moser XV”This may be the best-known winery in Ningxia.
Changyu is China’s oldest wine company (founded 1892; see Roots and Routes). Moser XV is its joint venture with Lenz Moser V, an Austrian winemaking family. The estate sits in central Yinchuan with excellent road access, a 4A-grade tourism designation, and is the first wine-tourism stop for most visitors to Ningxia.
From a winemaking angle, Moser XV did something quietly interesting: China’s first Cabernet Sauvignon Blanc de Noirs, a white or pale-pink juice pressed from a red grape. Lenz Moser V is known in Austria for pushing wine innovation, and that experimental DNA has continued in Ningxia.
The wines sit at the upper-middle quality band, not at the same tier as the boutique estates profiled earlier. But the hospitality is highly polished. If this is your first Ningxia visit, it is a good doorway.
Zhihui Yuanshi
Section titled “Zhihui Yuanshi”Run by Yuan Hui and his daughter Yuan Yuan, near Yinchuan city. Second Tier. Its distinctive feature is not the wine but the integration of winery and travel.
About 150,000 visitors a year. The estate building is clad in local stone and dissolves into the rocky textures of the Helan foothills. If you want to understand the concept of wine + tourism integration in Ningxia, Zhihui Yuanshi is the canonical example: it shows that an estate can be a serious tourism destination without the two pulling against each other.
Chandon China
Section titled “Chandon China”LVMH’s sparkling-wine project in Ningxia. Crowned World’s Best Sparkling Wine in 2024.
Sparkling wine in Ningxia is, on its face, counterintuitive. The region’s extreme aridity and intense sun should naturally favor dense red wine. But sparkling wine needs high acidity and freshness, and that is precisely what Ningxia’s wide diurnal range delivers. Chandon uses méthode traditionnelle in Yongning to demonstrate Ningxia’s terroir is more multi-faceted than the dense-Cabernet stereotype suggests.
Dongfang Yuxing
Section titled “Dongfang Yuxing”The 2025 DWWA Best in Show, the first time Ningxia has taken Decanter’s top global honor.
Dongfang Yuxing is in Hongsipu, Ningxia’s southernmost and highest sub-region, and the largest ecological resettlement area in China. Hundreds of thousands of people were relocated here from the southern Ningxia mountains. An estate from a poverty-alleviation zone winning Decanter’s top global honor, the social meaning runs well beyond what is in the bottle.
Domaine Pushang
Section titled “Domaine Pushang”2025 DWWA Gold. Marselan pioneer.
If you want to understand why Marselan keeps getting more important in Ningxia, Pushang is unavoidable. Marselan is a Cabernet Sauvignon × Grenache cross, bred in southern France in 1961, undistinguished in its homeland, blossoming into something else in China (see Grapes of China). Pushang has taken the Ningxia-Marselan potential further than almost anyone.
Leirenshou
Section titled “Leirenshou”2016 DWWA Platinum winner. Owner Feng Qing. About 147 hectares of vines.
The estate name Leirenshou (类人首) comes from the Helan Mountain rock carvings, millennia-old human-face petroglyphs on the cliffs of Mount Helan. The name ties the region’s archaeological inheritance to its wine. The wines themselves are solid rather than top-tier, but Leirenshou represents the mid-scale Ningxia estate well: not the absolute summit, but consistent quality, frequent international medals, the backbone of the region.
The Next Generation: Three Sharp Voices
Section titled “The Next Generation: Three Sharp Voices”Three young brands worth tracking, each refusing a familiar playbook.
Petit Mont (小蒙). A mobile-winemaking model. Plants Dunkelfelder in Ningxia, a German red variety obscure even in Germany. As far as I know, Petit Mont is the only producer of Chinese Dunkelfelder.
Xiao Pu (小圃). A nomadic-winemaking model, négociant-vigneron in French terms. Shown at RAW WINE (the global natural-wine fair). Sources grapes from six different Chinese provinces, owns no vineyards of its own. The migrant-winemaker model is still rare in China.
Lingering Clouds (留云, Liuyun). Founded by Liu Jianjun, formerly of Silver Heights. The signature wine is Cha+donnay, Chinese tea and Chardonnay combined into a pet-nat sparkling wine. Selected for James Suckling’s Top 100 China list. Putting Chinese tea culture and wine fermentation literally inside the same bottle, the imaginative reach here points at where the next generation of Ningxia winemakers may be going.
PLACEHOLDER:hero-other-estates at the top. PLACEHOLDER:photo-xige-old-vines inside Xige section, the 1997 original-planting block. PLACEHOLDER:photo-helan-rock-art inside Leirenshou section, one of the human-face petroglyphs the estate is named after. PLACEHOLDER:photo-chadonnay-bottle inside Lingering Clouds section, the tea+Chardonnay pet-nat label.