You know a wine venture is a success if you have the world’s most energetic purveyor of special glasses and decanters, Georg Riedel of Austria, volunteering to take part.

Two weeks ago, I flew to a remote province of China to participate in the inaugural Ningxia Wine Festival. But Riedel got there several days before me – and when I managed to visit the wine producer who first alerted me to the potential of Ningxia, vivacious Emma Gao of Silver Heights, I found that her collection of Riedel glassware took up almost more room than her tiny barrel cellar.

Ningxia is a small, impoverished province 550 miles west of Beijing. Until recently it was best known for its inhospitable mountains and desert, sheep and goji berries, but local government officials have become convinced that Ningxia’s future lies in wine. A campaign started in earnest in the late 1990s when the Ningxia Agricultural Reclamation Management Bureau swung into action, transforming the desert between the Yellow River and the eastern slopes of the Helan Mountains into potential vineyard by determined applications of irrigation water, cover crops and bulldozers. It was clear that cereals and corn wouldn’t do well there, but that the vines that produced a drink the Chinese were rapidly becoming interested in would thrive.