Legacy Peak: The Vineyard Inside a World Heritage Site
Only the vines are left now.
Legacy Peak’s stone winery building, 2,100 square meters, came down. The stones had been quarried from the vineyard soil itself. The roof had gaps left for nesting birds. The tasting room had a round window built to catch daylight by day and frame the moon at night. The courtyard where they roasted whole lamb is gone too. For years, Ningxia winemakers agreed on one thing: Legacy Peak’s roast lamb was the best on the eastern foothills of Helan Mountain. Tan Yang sheep fed on licorice grass in saline-alkaline pastures. Firm meat, no gaminess. Roasted at the edge of the vineyard, paired with the estate’s Cabernet, a few hundred meters from the silent earth tumuli of the Western Xia tombs. That scene will not happen again.
But the vines planted in 1997 are still there. 8.9 hectares. Not one removed.
Why demolish the building and leave the vines?
A Plot of Wasteland
Section titled “A Plot of Wasteland”Around 1997, a small group of pioneers planted the first international varieties on the eastern foothills of Helan Mountain. Liu Zhongmin, Legacy Peak’s first-generation owner, was one of them. He was not a farmer. He worked in construction. After completing a project for the local government, he was given a plot of wasteland in payment, on the condition that he could only plant grapes. Under the encouragement of Wang Fengyu (a recurring figure in Ningxia’s founding stories: long-time technical lead at Helan Qing Xue, and father of Judy Chan of Kanaan), Liu planted Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay on the gravelly soil at the foot of the mountain.
The family knew nothing about agriculture. But the vines survived.
Then what? Years of losses. For more than a decade, the grapes could not fetch a fair price; the wine did not sell. The family considered ripping up every vine and walking away. Liu Hai later told an interviewer: “We were going to pull them all out. We were done.”
Liu Hai’s mother stopped them. She heard about the plan to sell the vineyard and was deeply upset. She refused. A mother who knew nothing about winemaking saved, on instinct, Ningxia’s most precious old vines.
In Burgundy, thirty-year-old vines are unremarkable. Romanée-Conti’s average vine age is over fifty. But Ningxia is not Burgundy. In a region where vines must be buried every winter to survive, a vine that has lived through nearly thirty winters is already a survivor. With roughly 5% annual losses, of every hundred vines planted in 1997, perhaps twenty are still alive today. Almost three decades, each one carrying its own birth-death cycle: autumn burial, freezing to below −20°C through winter, spring exhumation, summer regrowth. Every vine that made it deserves respect.
The mother kept the vineyard. In 2010, Liu Hai decided to take over the winemaking himself.
Liu Hai
Section titled “Liu Hai”He was under thirty when he took over.
The Drinks Business asked him, if you were a bottle of wine, what kind would you be? He answered: “A serious, understated, traditional wine, like a classic Bordeaux blend. Quiet and humble, but with the potential to age beautifully over time.”
He wanted to make wines that could be passed down. Legacy Peak. The name is the goal.
8.9 hectares. 6.9 Cabernet Sauvignon, 1.2 Merlot, 0.8 Chardonnay. All planted in 1997. All hand-managed. In Bordeaux, not enough for a garagiste estate. In Ningxia, an irreplaceable resource.
His winemaking leans natural. No commercial yeast. No acidification or tannin adjustment. Whole-cluster fermentation. French oak. In a region where some estates still use industrial techniques to chase an international taste, his restraint requires confidence. The confidence comes from the old vines themselves. When the fruit is this good, the smartest thing a winemaker can do is leave it alone.
All Legacy Peak’s reds carry the character yu (羽, feather) in their name. Chi Yu (赤羽, crimson feather), 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Mei Yu (美羽, plum feather), 100% Merlot. Lan Yu (兰羽, orchid feather), 100% Marselan. The flagship is Kalavinka (迦兰纳歌), named for the mythical sweet-voiced bird of Buddhist legend. 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, whole-berry fermentation for fifteen days, nineteen months in new French oak. 2013 was the first vintage. The top tier is Family Heritage: 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, twenty-four months in new oak, only 6,000 bottles per vintage. A few characters on the label compress three generations of story.
Could these wines stand up in the most demanding tasting context? In 2023, I decided to find out.
A Tasting in Burgundy
Section titled “A Tasting in Burgundy”In 2023, I organized a Legacy Peak tasting in Burgundy. The Legacy Peak team had come back to Europe after the pandemic, traveling from Bordeaux to Dijon. I flew from Jerusalem to Marseille and drove up to Burgundy from there.
Holding a Chinese tasting on French wine country’s home ground had the feel of a challenge match. But Legacy Peak held its ground.
The tasting drew attention from local Burgundy producers and from the OIV (International Organisation of Vine and Wine). In a place with an almost religious commitment to terroir, a Cabernet Sauvignon from the eastern foothills of Helan Mountain was taken seriously.
In July 2025, the wine journal Taste Wine and the International Terroir Association (AIT) jointly hosted the first China-France Terroir Wine and Tea Symposium in Burgundy. Legacy Peak was one of six Chinese estates invited. Liu Hai and winemaker Zhou Shuzhen attended in person. AIT president Thibault Liger-Belair, vice-president Jacky Rigaux, Aubert de Villaine (co-owner of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti), and twelve top Burgundy estates were all in the same room. OIV added the event to its annual official calendar.
Legacy Peak had already entered French radar earlier. In 2016, the Chi Yu Cabernet Sauvignon was selected for the Bettane + Desseauve annual guide, the most authoritative wine guide in France. Kalavinka has earned 92 from James Suckling. Legacy Peak wines now appear on the lists of more than two hundred Michelin-starred restaurants. They have been poured at British Embassy dinners and at China’s Zijin state guesthouse banquets.
For an 8.9-hectare estate to reach this point took twenty-six years.
Inside a World Heritage Site
Section titled “Inside a World Heritage Site”Legacy Peak’s vineyard sits next to the Western Xia Imperial Tombs.
The Western Xia (1038–1227), a Tangut empire, fell to Mongol cavalry and almost vanished from history. What remains is nine imperial mausoleums at the foot of Helan Mountain. Large earth tumuli on the Gobi plain, pyramid-shaped. Liu Hai’s father once joked about these neighbors: “The royalty buried nearby probably add some extra energy to our terroir.”
On July 11, 2025, in Paris, UNESCO’s 47th World Heritage Committee voted to inscribe Xixia Imperial Tombs on the World Heritage List. China’s sixtieth listed site. The nomination dossier ran to 300,000 words and took fourteen years and two major revisions to complete. To meet UNESCO requirements, nearly 100,000 square meters of modern buildings inside the protected zone were demolished. Hotels. Tourist facilities. Farms. Village houses.
Legacy Peak’s winery building was among them. Liu Hai chose demolition.
Weigh that decision. A winery building is not just production infrastructure. It is the brand’s physical presence. The reception, the tasting room, the legendary roast-lamb dinners, all happened in that courtyard. Every stone had come out of this soil. Tearing it down meant removing the most direct connection between Legacy Peak and its visitors.
But the vineyard stayed. After the inscription, this vineyard has a new identity: the Heritage Vineyard. The only vineyard in China inside a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Eight hundred years of imperial tombs and almost thirty years of old vines, both inside the same World Heritage frame now.
Three generations of choices. A construction job traded for a plot of wasteland. Vines planted in wasteland. A mother stopping the family from giving up. A winery building taken down so the vines could stay inside the heritage zone. The line has not broken once.
The 1997 vines, the Western Xia tombs a few hundred meters away, and Helan Mountain behind them now sit inside the same protected zone.
Legacy Peak kept the vineyard and lost the building. The choice was deliberate.
Visiting Notes
Section titled “Visiting Notes”| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Vineyard | 8.9 hectares, all planted 1997 (Heritage Vineyard, only vineyard in China inside a World Heritage Site) |
| Elevation | 1,246 m |
| Annual production | Under 100,000 bottles |
| Classification | Ningxia Second Growth (2021) |
| Export markets | France, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia |
| Note | The main winery building was demolished in 2025 as part of the Western Xia Imperial Tombs UNESCO inscription; the vineyard remains within the protected heritage zone |
| Wines to taste | Kalavinka (to understand the power of 1997 old vines); Chi Yu (a pure Cabernet expression); Family Heritage (request specifically if available) |
PLACEHOLDER:hero-legacy-peak at the top. PLACEHOLDER:photo-old-vines inside §2, 1997-planted Cabernet trunk close-up. PLACEHOLDER:photo-western-xia-tombs inside §5, the tumuli with the vineyard in foreground. PLACEHOLDER:portrait-liu-hai inside §3.