Wu Xiuyong

To complement the annual Decanter Hall of Fame award, a Rising Star is selected each year as a recognition of up-and-coming talent. This year's award goes to a winemaker in one of the wine world's lesser-known corners who has built her career through grit and determination. A champion of innovation, she's also committed to rural education and to inspiring the young, especially women, to forge a career in wine

- PROFILE BY SYLVIA WU

Wu Xiuyong is the winemaking talent behind one of the two Chinese wines named Best in Show – the top accolade, awarded to only 50 wines – in this year’s Decanter World Wine Awards (DWWA). Head winemaker at Dongfang Yuxing in Hongsipu, Ningxia, Wu (this article follows the Chinese convention of placing the surname first) is proud of the success achieved by Geruihong Yeguangbei 2022, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Dornfelder and Cabernet Gernischt (Carmenère). She and her team also took home a Top Value Gold, awarded to just 30 Gold medal winners with a retail price under £15, for their Geruihong Marselan 2024.

This has been the greatest achievement at DWWA for Chinese wines in more than a decade, and an eagerly awaited win for Hongsipu, the cooler, lesser-known southernmost sub-region of Ningxia.

A talent rooted in the soil

Wu was raised in a modest rural family. Her parents worked at a grassland agricultural research station while raising five children. She began helping out at the age of five, packaging grass seeds into paper bags for her parents to sell for the equivalent of just a few pence for each batch.

From her early days, Wu was fascinated by the plant world. She would sneak off into the mountains and spend entire days immersed in the diverse scents and shapes of wild flora.

Though the family had limited means – even more so after Wu’s father passed away when she was just 13 years old – they shared a passion for reading, believing that the knowledge they acquired had the potential to change their lives. An old, tattered copy of the