LATE LAST JULY, I took a train from Urumqi, in China’s remote Xinjiang province, to Beijing. The trip took 48 hours, during which I had plenty of time to stare out the window at the deserts of the northwest-flat stretches of land in more grays, yellows, and browns than I had known existed, bordered in the distance by low mountain ranges that spoke of time and exhaustion.

But every once in a while, the desert would be broken by explosions of green: a fruit orchard here, a melon patch there, and often, in neat rows next to a flat-roofed house, grape vines. “For wine?” I asked a fellow passenger in basic Mandarin.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “To eat.”

Thank God, I thought. The last thing this world needs is more Chinese wine.

That Chinese wine exists at all is a tragedy; that some journalists are hailing it as “surprisingly tasty” is a virtual crime. But exist it does, produced in ever larger quantities in China’s northern and western provinces, like Xinjiang, Shandong, and Shaanxi, with help from foreigners from traditionally wine-loving lands like Austria and France. And Chinese people themselves are drinking more and more vino-even though they don’t seem to care how it tastes. And it tastes bad.

Maybe I’ve just been prejudiced by bad experience. During a trip to Shanghai in early 2005, I wound up having dinner in the backroom of a nice restaurant with my French friend Cedric, his roommate Louis, and a pair of their friends, 28-year-old Johnny and 40-something Shu Shu. Johnny and Shu Shu (which means “uncle”) turned out to be high-level government officials, and Shu Shu certainly looked the part, with his unlined pink face and delicate gold-rimmed glasses. He exuded power, effortless control over any and every situation.

Wine was the drink of the evening: a white and a red from Shaanxi, which might have complemented our meal of hearty Shanghainese stews if they’d been served alongside the food. But no. The wine came out after the plates had been cleared away; it was for toasting, not sipping. Every glass was filled to the brim, and had to be downed at one go, lest the drinker insult Shu Shu. And I certainly didn’t want to insult Shu Shu.

I won’t pretend to remember with supreme clarity the aroma or flavor of the wine that night. All I know is that it took immense effort to get each sour glass-sometimes white, sometimes red-down my gullet, and that I woke up the next morning in my hotel room, on the 72nd floor of the ultramodern Grand Hyatt, amid pools of deep-purple vomit that stained the heavenly white bed down to the mattress.

Such overindulgence is, sadly, the norm in China, where alcohol is prized mainly for its potency. When it comes to drinking, most Chinese people are like freshman at a Big 10 school; the idea that one could linger over a glass of Cabernet or sip at a tumbler of single-malt Scotch is as foreign as, well, Cabernet Sauvignon and Scotch whiskey. Even domestic liquors like the rice-based baijiu and huangjiu rarely come in palatable forms, while kao liang, made from sorghum, is the only hard liquor I’ve ever had that actually tastes worse with every powerful thimble-size shot. As for beer, about the best you can say about Tsingtao is that it’s cheaper than Heineken.

This indifference to flavor is mindblowing in a country that is otherwise so passionate about food. Ask a Chinese person to debate the merits of Sichuan versus Hunan cuisine, or whether they like stinky tofu, and you’ll get an earful (and, if you’re lucky, a moutful). Tea is the liquid fetish object of the Middle Kingdom, with adamant factions lined up equally behind green, oolong, jasmine and rare brews you’ve probably never heard of.

And it’s not like this is some Asia-wide failing. Japan makes sakes of infinite subtlety, Korea’s managed to promote its sweet-potato soju as a fashionable mixer in New York cocktail bars, and in Vietnam, once colonized by the French, a bottle of wine with dinner remains a sign of middle-class sophistication.

Obviously, wine, beer and whiskey are relatively new in China, and much education remains to be done. (The same could be said of parts of the United States, too.) And there are definitely people, often urban sophisticates, who know and love wine and would wince at the idea of glugging a Chateau Margot like a salt-lined shot of tequila. My friend David Huang keeps a collection of bottles at his Shanghai hotel, No. 9, that never fails to provoke gasps of envy from friends I bring to visit. Of course, David grew up in Taiwan.

But I suspect education will have a tough time transforming a culture that considers wine a means to a goggle-eyed end. I can’t claim to be a scholar of Chinese literature, but I have seen a good selection of Chinese movies from the past century, and in every one alcohol is a drink with a problem. From Drunken Master (1978), in which Jackie Chan discovers new powers while under the influence, to Fearless (2006), in which Jet Li’s drinking is all that keeps him from becoming the national kung fu hero he was born to be, inebriation’s inevitable, tipsiness unthinkable.

The question, then, is who winemakers are making these wines for? The untutored masses thirsting for a spicy Zin? No, I suspect much of that Xinjiang Chardonnay is simple speculation, designed to lure deep-pocketed Western oenophiles into investing in China, whether in the wine industry itself or in other businesses. For wine, perhaps more than any other agro-industrial product, conveys an image of modernity, of enlightened progress, on its producer. If China’s making and selling wine, then surely it’s on a par with France or Italy (or at least Chile and New Zealand).

In time, of course, Chinese wine will get better and Chinese consumers less hell-bent on getting blitzed. You’ll be able to order a glass of crisp Sauvignon Blanc from Shandong with your Shanghai soup dumplings, and even the laborers erecting high-end Beijing housing developments with names like Harvard Square will relax after work with a cheap, earthy Syrah. Until that era arrives, however, if a man named Shu Shu invites you to dinner, invest in a bottle of Advil and a set of rubber sheets. •

Matt Gross writes the Frugal Traveler column for the New York Times.