Ian Dai is a busy man. The winemaker has 30 wines in his portfolio, produced from grapes grown in six regions across China, from the inland plains of Ningxia to the mountain country of Yunnan. He is also a founding member of the Young Generation China Wine group, a collective of around 20 next-gen producers who are reinventing the image of Chinese wine. And he has just started shipping small quantities of some of his wines to Australia, his first export market.

“I love it here,” says Dai, when I catch up with him on a visit to promote his first shipments. “I have connections here [he went to school in Sydney for a couple of years and has worked in Australian wineries] and it’s a good market.