Moet Hennessy Estates & Wines

Ao-Yun means “flying above the clouds” or “roaming above the clouds”, referring to the thick, wandering clouds over the north Yunnan, at the edge of the Himalayas in southern China where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam meet China. Owned, financed and run by Moët Hennessy (one of the world’s great fine wine companies), Ao-Yun is a project headed up by the inimitable Jean-Guillaume Prats, a name you may be familiar with for his work at Cos d’Estournel in Bordeaux.

The vines were planted in 2002, when the government incentivised local farmers to diversify their crops. LVMH came on board in 2013, selecting four vineyards (totalling 28 hectares), all of which sit at between 2,200 and 2,600 metres above sea-level, for their project. This extraordinary altitude results in fewer hours of sunshine a day, but a longer ripening period, with 160 days between flowering and harvest (versus 120 in Bordeaux). This leads to very fine, elegant, aromatically complex Cabernet Sauvignon.

The wine itself is 90% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Cabernet Franc, with the first vintage 2013. As Jasper Morris MW speculated upon tasting the first vintage in October 2015, it “shows amazing promise. It is recognisably Cabernet, while not resembling the wines of any other region, New World or Old.”