Founded in 2007 at the foot of the East Helan Mountain range, Silver Heights is one of China’s most progressive and lauded vineyards. An early espouser of making wines that seek to reflect their terroir, the winemaker Emma Gao tirelessly employs approaches best for the land, starting with organic practices and later adopting biodynamic methods, to the extent that Silver Heights was recently recognized as China’s first Demeter- and EU Organic-certified winery (2023). Half of their estate is dedicated to a fully-functioning farm with horses, sheep, and other animals that Emma believes play a pivotal roll in enhancing biodiversity and thus nurturing the ecosystem. Emma seeks to balance tradition with innovation, eastern with western wisdom, to create wines that require minimal intervention (wild yeast only, minimal filtration, minimal sulfur) to express the natural beauty of the fruit. Silver Heights has won numerous awards, including “Winery of the Year” (Bettane + Desseauve, 2023), and Emma Gao is one of China’s most accoladed winemakers, including “Winemaker of the Year” (China Wine Summit, 2021) and “Top 10 Most Influential Women in China’s Wine Trade” (The Drinks Business, 2019).