Australian wine brand Penfolds recently unveiled Lot. 518, a spirited wine with baijiu – Chinese liquor - as part of its special bottlings range.

With rich and full-bodied hybrid, the baijiu-infused shiraz is the first time for Penfolds to use a non-grape spirit in its fortified product.

“The greatest challenge is to break the mode that only using grape spirits with fortified spirits and realize that there are more options available,” said James Godfrey, global fortified and spirit winemaker of Penfolds. He recently visited Beijing.

He felt he has a connection with China since he was a child, because his grandparents once lived in Shanghai for a decade and his father was born there in 1916.

According to him, the team has looked at various spirits to make the fortified wine before they finally set their eye on baijiu.

“Vodka makes the wine stronger but doesn’t contribute to its character. Rum gives it a distinctive sweetness that clashes with our style, and whiskey’s smoky character tend to dominate,” he said.

“Our special bottlings have to be innovative and surprise people. It’s hard to describe that when you put two distinctive things together, they still shine.”

He learned that there are different styles within baijiu such as fragrance.

They carried out about 40 trials using different types of baijiu to finally settle on one particular style. He said the chosen baijiu has a fined style of aromas and tight fragrance, but doesn’t reveal much detail about it.

He said the coming together of baijiu and the fortified shiraz works well and was confident that it will bring the Chinese liquor to the Western world. He said the wine goes well with Chinese meat dishes and spicy food.