CHINA’S WINE TRAIL
HEBEI, NINGXIA & YUNNAN
Duration
Sept 6 - 19, 2026
13 nights / 14 days
Starting Point
Beijing
Beijing Province
Ending Point
Lijiang
Yunnan Province
Group Size
Max 12 guests
Min 8 guests
Price
A$18,979.98 based on double occupancy
Solo supplement available
China has been making wine for decades. Most of the world doesn't know it's happening, let alone how interesting it's gotten.
This trip moves through three versions of that story. In Hebei, just outside Beijing, we visit the producers who were among the first to plant — the origin point of a modern wine industry still finding its footing in the global market. In Ningxia, the great desert plateau east of the Yellow River, we meet the winemakers who turned a strange, arid landscape into one of Asia's most credible appellations. And in Yunnan, where river valleys cut through the Himalayan foothills at elevations that would make most viticulturalists sweat, we find the frontier: producers like Tinnyu and Xiao Pu who are making wine unlike anything else on earth, in one of the last places you'd ever think to look for it. China's wine past, present, and future across 14 days and three regions that share almost nothing except the vine.
We travel in September, which means harvest is beginning. Winemakers are in their vineyards, and we're with them. We'll be joined by Hamish Williams from Periphery Wine, one of the foremost authorities in Australia on Chinese wine, to lead our wine program, bringing a level of context and access that opens doors most visitors simply don't get to walk through. Beyond the glass: ancient imperial tombs and Yellow River sunsets in Ningxia, morning markets and street food in Kunming, the ancient cobblestone lanes and Naxi culture of Lijiang, and Tibetan villages high above Shangri-La where the food, the people, and the landscape feel genuinely like nowhere else. These are sides of China most visitors never reach, and a side of Chinese wine the global industry is only just beginning to pay attention to.
Day 1 - 2: China’s Wine Past
Day 1 - Arrival
Everyone arrives in Beijing in their own time. We gather for a Peking duck welcome dinner, the perfect way to start any trip to China, and a dish that's been perfected in this city for centuries.
Included: Dinner, Accommodation
Day 2 - Canaan Winery & Shixiaguan Great Wall
After breakfast, we drive northwest to Huailai, where Canaan Winery gives us our first taste of Hebei's wine story. This is a region that was at the centre of China's first wine boom in the 1980s, when China was opening up and needed wines that could hold their own on a diplomatic table. After lunch, we make visit The Great Wall at Shixiaguan. While areas like Badaling draws crowds onto gleaming, restored ramparts, this section sits just a few kilometres away, largely unrestored, with standing watchtowers, mountain ridges in both directions, and almost nobody else on it. We return to Beijing for dinner.
Included: Breakfast, Winery tour and tasting, Lunch, Dinner, Accommodation
Day 3 - 5: China’s Wine Present
Day 3 - Arrival in Ningxia
We fly into Yinchuan and land in a completely different China. The Helan Mountains rise to the west, the Yellow River runs to the east, and in between is a high-altitude, semi-arid plateau that has quietly built one of Asia's most credible wine appellations over the last two decades. After settling in, we bring together a group of Ningxia winemakers for an afternoon workshop with Hamish: there's a high concentration of interesting producers here and we can only visit a few, so instead we bring them to us. We follow that with a welcome dinner of Hui Muslim food, the cuisine that defines this table, where hand-pulled noodles, slow-braised lamb, and spiced broths reflect centuries of Silk Road influence.
Included: Breakfast, Dinner, Accommodation
Day 4 - Western Xia Tombs, Helan Qingxue & Silver Heights
Before the vineyards, a detour into deep history. The Western Xia Tombs are the remnants of a kingdom that ruled this region for nearly 200 years before being erased from the historical record by the Mongols. Dozens of earthen mounds stretch across the desert floor, eerie and enormous, sometimes called the Eastern Pyramids. After lunch, we visit Helan Qingxue, the boutique winery founded in 2005 that put Ningxia on the world map when its Jia Bei Lan won an International Trophy at Decanter in 2011. The day ends at Silver Heights, where Emma Gao has been farming biodynamically since 2017 and achieved Demeter certification in 2023, the only winery in China to do so. She and her family live on the vineyard. They're cooking dinner: a whole roast lamb, the great Hui specialty of the region.
Included: Breakfast, Western Xia Tombs entry, Lunch, Winery tastings, Dinner, Accommodation
Day 5 - Onwards to Kunming
The morning is yours to explore Yinchuan before we fly south. The Muslim quarter around the Nanguan Mosque is worth the wander, with food stalls and tea houses that give you a different angle on the Hui culture you've been eating your way through. In the afternoon we swap the desert plateau for Kunming, a subtropical city sitting at 1,900 metres where the air is softer, the markets are full of tropical produce, and the food shifts completely. We're in Yunnan now, and tonight's welcome dinner is Dai, the cuisine of one of the province's most distinctive ethnic minorities: herb-forward, bright with lemongrass and lime, grilled fish wrapped in banana leaves, with pineapple rice on the side.
Included: Breakfast, Dinner, Accommodation
Day 6 - 8: The Road South
Day 6 - Kunming
Kunming earns its nickname. The Spring City's weather rarely dips below pleasant, and September is the best time to arrive. It's the tail end of wild mushroom season and the wet market stalls are piled with varieties that would cost a small fortune back home: matsutake, boletus, chanterelles, and a few you won't have a name for. We spend the morning at the market, then the afternoon and evening are yours. Green Lake Park (翠湖公园) is worth a slow wander as the city winds down, and the lanes around Wenlin Jie near Yunnan University are good for coffee and browsing. Or visit Yuantong Temple, the oldest Buddhist temple in Kunming, quietly active and architecturally striking.
Included: Breakfast, Accommodation
Day 7 - FARMentation
We drive two hours southwest into Chuxiong, Yi minority territory, where fermentation culture runs deep — historically through grain spirits and smoked teas rather than wine. FARMentation is doing something different. Their pear orchard sits in the shadow of a wind turbine with an old granary alongside it. The tagline says it all: 风土横切面, a cross-section of terroir. We arrive in the afternoon for the winery visit and tasting, then take a slow walk through the orchard before dinner. The meal is an outdoor copper pot spread, communal and unhurried, built around whatever is in season. The bonfire goes late.
Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Wine Tasting, Dinner, Accommodation
Day 8 - Erhai Lake and Lijiang
The morning starts with a trip to the local farmers market with the FARMentation team. It's a window into how Chuxiong people shop, cook, and eat, with the same seasonal logic the winery applies to the land. Then we load up the coach for the long drive to Lijiang, breaking in Dali for a stop at Erhai Lake. At over 250 square kilometres the lake has been central to Bai culture for centuries. Their villages line the shore, their boats still work the water, and in September the light is clear and the Cangshan mountains behind it are sharp against the sky. We arrive in Lijiang in the late afternoon, check in, and then you're free to spend the evening exploring this 800-year-old village, a UNESCO-listed maze of stone lanes and waterways that comes alive after dark when the lanterns go up.
Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Accommodation
Day 9 - 12: China’s Wine Future
Day 9 - Chalu Sparkling Tea
The morning belongs to Chalu. Based here in Lijiang, Chalu makes sparkling tea using foraged botanicals from the surrounding mountains, and this half-day tasting takes you properly inside what they're doing. You'll work through the range with the team, understanding how altitude, seasons, and local plant life shape what ends up in the glass. It's a serious exploration of terroir told through tea rather than wine, which for this group should feel like a natural conversation. The afternoon is free to explore on your own terms.
Included: Breakfast, Chalu tasting, Accommodation
Day 10 - Ascent to Shangri-La
We load the coach and head north. The road to Shangri-La takes the better part of a day, so we break the drive at Baishuitai, a series of natural limestone terraces formed over thousands of years by calcium-rich spring water cascading down the mountainside. It's a sacred site for the Naxi people, used for ceremonial gatherings long before it became a scenic area, and the scale of it is quietly surprising. We arrive in Shangri-La in the late afternoon, check in, and let the altitude do its work. Tonight we eat together: yak butter tea, barley bread, air-dried yak meat, and whatever the kitchen has been slow-cooking. Tibetan food is built for cold and elevation, and at 3,200 metres, you'll understand why.
Included: Breakfast, Dinner, Accommodation
Day 11 - Shangri-La
We're staying in Dukezong, the oldest surviving Tibetan settlement in the region, with more than 1,300 years of continuous habitation behind it. Take the morning to wander on your own while you acclimatize to the altitude — the stone lanes, the prayer wheels, the smell of incense drifting from open doorways reward a slow pace and no particular plan. In the afternoon we visit Songzanlin together, the largest Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Yunnan, built in 1679 during the reign of the fifth Dalai Lama and home to around 700 monks. You approach it up a long staircase with the whole whitewashed complex rising above you, its golden rooftops reflected in the lake below on a clear day. Tonight dinner is on your own.
Included: Breakfast, Songzanlin entry, Accommodation
Day 12 - Tinnyu Winery
We'll start later today, with a drive about ninety minutes to the Meilishui area to visit Tinnyu. Leqi Liu and Yuxuan Qiu started this project in 2021 after both had trained in France and worked at Domaine Franco-Chinois in Hebei, the same winery we visited on Day 2. They work with Tibetan villagers across three villages in the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, farming less than a hectare across plots at 2,600 to 2,800 metres above sea level. The wines are a direct expression of that elevation and that place. In the evening, Tinnyu has arranged dinner with the local Tibetan community.
Included: Breakfast, Wine Tasting, Dinner, Accommodation
Day 13 - 14: Farewell
Day 13 - Back to Lijiang
One last stop before we come down the mountain. Nixi's Tangdui Village sits at nearly 3,000 metres, about 33 kilometres from Shangri-La, and has been producing black pottery continuously for close to a thousand years. The pottery is utilitarian black ware, used by Tibetan households for cooking and cultural and religious ceremonies — the same forms, the same open-air firing method, almost unchanged. We stop to watch the potters at work and spend some time with the families who are still doing it. Then we load back up and make the drive back to Lijiang, where we collect the gin we foraged and made at Chalu on Day 9, bottled and waiting, a souvenir that exists nowhere else in the world. We close out the trip with a farewell dinner: one last Yunnan feast of the cuisine that started when we landed in Kunming.
Included: Breakfast, Farewell Dinner, Accommodation
Day 14 - Zai Jian
From here, everyone heads in their own direction. Lijiang connects to Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Guangzhou for onward flights home, and there are train connections for those who want to keep exploring China. If you have time before you leave, the old town is five minutes from most hotels and worth one last slow lap. Fourteen days, three regions, more wine than we can count. Safe travels.
Included: Breakfast
Our Wine Expert
Hamish Williams is Australia's leading Chinese wine enthusiast and importer of Chinese wines. He works with small, independent producers across the country who value environment, sustainability, and quality. Since establishing Periphery Wine in 2024, Hamish has become passionate about sharing the story of Chinese wine, and now serves as a vessel for Chinese-Australian independent wine dialogue. He loves providing Australian consumers with new experiences that challenge assumptions and encourage new perspectives.
Periphery Wine is a small collection of premium wines made by independent producers who hold a grounded perspective on wine culture, use environmentally-conscious farming techniques, and are committed to quality-driven winemaking practices.
Around the world, alternative wines from new and emerging markets are underrepresented, with new stories to tell and different outlooks to explore. Diversity is the key to a delightful life, and it’s through our lived experiences and unique perspectives, united by the humble bottle of wine, that evokes excitement and adventure.
GET OFF THE EATEN TRACK WITH US
Our tours are deliberately small, created for travelers who crave discovery and connection. Register your interest and we’ll be in touch to arrange a quick call—so we can get to know you, and you can get a taste of what’s waiting Off The Eaten Track.
This tour is intended for wine professionals and priority for available spots will be given to people working in the wine industry.
Image credits:
Photos via Xiaohongshu
Chermano via Pixabay