Impressions of Indochina

Until very recently, Levi Hensel worked for Vinfolio in San Francisco. Here he shares his impressions of the wine scene encountered on a recent trip to Vietnam (home, according to our records, to just one Purple pages member). They sound all too typical of experiences in nascent wine cultures in warm climates.

Led by French expatriates, Vietnamese wine production started in earnest during the early 1940s (in what was then Indochina), and is centred around the city of Da Lat in southern hill country. There had been some viticultural efforts here even earlier – possibly around the turn of the...