Hello and welcome to this edition of  Africa Express here on China Radio International. I'm your host, Wei Tong.

Last time, we embraced the dynamic and romantic African culture, ranging from fragrant Ethiopian coffee to rugged Kenyan wood-carvings - which are now on display at the first African Tourism and Culture Festival underway in Beijing.

During the 10-day festival, one of the highlights is the red wine produced in South Africa. When I visited this booth, I was warmly invited to sip a small glass of it; the entire booth was permeated with the aroma of the ruby-coloured wine.

South Africa, on a parallel with France and Italy, is one of the world's leading wine producers and exporters. The wine industry in the country dates back to some 340 years ago, and was started by the Dutch India Trading Company in the mid-seventeenth Century. A few years later wines from the Cape Peninsula, which is home to the nation's best quality wines, were produced for the first time by Dutch Governor, Jan Van Riebeeck.

Then his successor brought in some immigrants from France and some of them were wine making families. They introduced brewing skills and secrets to South Africa. That, along with the country's perfect climatic conditions for grape growing, led to the regions red wine output enduring steady growth over the past several hundred years.

The wine on display at the festival comes from MCM Wines, a renowned company in Constantia, near Cape Town. Martyn Mills, president of the company says South African wines occupy a fairly small market share in China, only accounting for two to five percent of its total.

"There are a number of exclusive importers of foreign wines around, but they have a small and limited portfolio of South African brands, ranging from the very low entry level to the quite high cost level. However, I do not think those wine brands actually do enough to promote the brand, let alone themselves. So I don't think it is very focused and targeted. There is virtually zero overall impact on the market."

For some historic reason, South African wines have a predominant market in Europe, especially the United Kingdom and North America. Martyn explains that the small market in China is partly attributed to the distinctive culture between the two countries.

"As far as I am concerned, South Africans are very comfortable dealing with countries where the language is familiar, the business mindset is familiar. For most South African wine producers, to attempt to understand China or to take the risk to understand China is beyond them."

But Martyn is different from other South African businessmen. He's a forerunner in launching the wine business in China.

"I fortunately enjoy meeting with the Chinese and enjoy the challenge of opening China up for my wine."

By now Martyn has made three wines into China: Martyns Red, Kaapzicht and Groot Constantia. This most time-honoured wine brand from the Constantia region has had a rocky introduction into the Chinese market, with sales remaining small, that were only 20,000 bottles for each label sold.

I am not an expert on wine and my tongue is far from sensitive enough to distinguish the quality of wines from different parts of the world. So what are the exact specialties of South African wine that enable the country to rank as the world's eighth largest wine producer, just behind Australia? Martyn will share with us some interesting stories behind this fact.

"I would say our wine-making techniques. I think it is the freshness of the wine, the fresh approaches we use to brew wine. And also thanks to South Africa being welcomed back into the international community after apartheid ended, which dates back 13 years, with that we gained new vigour and energy with which to put in our wines. We also have one other unique variety called Pinotage. Pinotage was a professor in 1925. At Stellenbosch University, he cross-pollinated two species of quality grapes. In this way he brought about the unique flavour of the improved grapes, hence the name. Pinotage is a unique South African grape, which is a cross-pollinated home-produced variety. It would be well suited to the Chinese people but to make it you need a lot of skill. So I think all of this makes South Africa slightly different to other wine-making countries."

Martyn says he is expecting South African wines to expand into the Chinese market through the festival. His initial step is simply to display some of his products in China. He plans to bring in more of his products when his country's market share sees an increase.

Now that concludes this edition of  Africa Express. If you would like to listen to this or other stories again, you can log onto our website at: www.crienglish.com. I am Wei Tong. Hope you can tune into our program next time! Bye for now.