Silver Heights is one of China’s leading wineries that benefits from the enlightened leadership of Emma Gao, one of China’s best-known winemakers (many of China’s best winemakers are in fact female). Her winery neatly combines Chinese wisdom and patience with French know-how and Italian flair and creativity. In fact, Gao earned a Diplôme National d’Oenologue in Bordeaux and trained and informed her winemaking during internships at Château Calon-Ségur (where she fell in love with and married winemaker Thierry Courtade) and Château Lafon-Rochet, two of Saint-Estèphe’s, and Bordeaux’s, leading wine estates. Her company CEO, Marco Milani, is an Italian who has lived in China for more than fifteen years now and is very much Asian at heart. Add to this that Emma is a born tinkerer, always experimenting and trying new things, and so it cannot surprise that she is growing and making wine from Italian varieties such as Barbera and Sangiovese (and it is rumored, Nebbiolo). Other Chinese wineries also combine the savvy, flair and creativity of more than one nationality in their workforce, but at Silver Heights these individual parts come together to form a whole of uncommon success.
