Wang Fang [Photo provided to China Daily]

Crazy for wine

A few years back, that woman shopper was Wang.

"I never planned to be in this business," says the owner-winemaker at the biblically named Kanaan winery. "My friends had a winery in Germany, and when I lived there for some years, it was normal to drink one or two glasses each day. But I never learned the trade there or had training－I bought wines pretty much by the pretty label or the price," she says with a chuckle.

Not long after she returned to China, her father turned 60 and retired.

"He worked in science and technology for the provincial government," says Wang.

"He knew a lot of professors who had told him: 'In Ningxia, we can produce very good wines.' One, Li Hua, was convinced Helan Mountain was the best wine area in China, and he brought vines from France. So my father did two things: He got a driver's license, and he started a winery with two partners."

That was Helan Qingxue, the winery that made the world sit up and notice Ningxia wines when it scooped up the top international prize from Decanter magazine in 2011, for its 2009 Jia Bei Lan Grand Reserve, a Cabernet blend. That winery is right across the highway from Wang's own operation at Kanaan. Wang's father, Wang Fengyu, helped her set up her own vineyard, and the two take a lot of pride in each other's achievements, though they have different outlooks.

"My father's interest is the vineyard, the field," she says. "I am more focused on the winery." They go their own ways in the final product, too: Whites made under the Jia Bei Lan label are chardonnays, typical of the area, while Crazy Fang makes the rieslings she learned to love in Germany.

Devoutly religious, she declares that her birth father and her heavenly father have been her twin inspirations. Religious art, including antique German woodcuts, decorate the public areas of the winery, where visitors find a homelike environment as well as her collections of antiques and wineglasses.

"I wanted my tasting room to feel like home, not like a laboratory," she says, indicating the massive wooden dining table surrounded by comfortable chairs.