After the Tang conquest of Gaochang – an oasis state on the Silk Road located near Turfan in modern Xinjiang – in 641, the Chinese obtained the seeds of an elongated grape called 'mare teat' ( maru 馬乳) and learned from Gaochang a 'method of wine making' ( jiu fa 酒法). Not until the Tang dynasty (618–907) did the consumption of grape wines become more common. Wine thus remained an exotic product known by few people. One recovers from it more easily when one has taken too much.' Grapes continued to be grown in the following centuries, notably in the northwestern region of Gansu, but were not used to produce wine on a large scale. In the Three Kingdoms era (220–280 AD), Wei emperor Cao Pi noted that grape wine 'is sweeter than the wine made using ferments and sprouted grain.

The Shennong Bencao Jing, a work on materia medica compiled in the late Han, states that grapes could be used to produce wine. By the end of the second century BC, Han envoys had brought grape seeds from the wine-loving kingdom of Dayuan ( Ferghana in modern Uzbekistan) back to China and had them planted on imperial lands near the capital Chang'an (near modern-day Xi'an in Shaanxi province). In the 130s and 120s BC, a Chinese imperial envoy of the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) named Zhang Qian opened diplomatic relations with several Central Asian kingdoms, some of which produced grape wine. If grape wine consumption was once present in Bronze Age China, however, it was replaced by consumption of a range of alcoholic beverages made from sorghum, millet, rice, and fruits such as lychee or Asian plum. Remnants of grape seeds were also discovered. Out of more than two hundred ceramic pots discovered at the sites, seven were specifically used for grape wine. In 1995, a joint Sino-USA archaeology team including archaeologists from the Archeology Research Institute of Shandong University and American archaeologists under the leadership of Professor Fang Hui investigated the two archaeological sites 20 km to the northeast of Rizhao, and discovered the remnants of a variety of alcoholic beverages including grape wine, rice wine, mead, and several mixed beverages of these wines. The phrase, which translates literally to 'jade-like wine', but has an idiomatic meaning along the lines of 'wonderful wine'.

High quality wine called qióng jiāng yù yè ( Chinese: 瓊漿玉液) is mentioned in the Complete Tang Poems (Quan Tangshi), an 18th-century collection of around 50,000 poems compiled during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor. Use of wild grapes in production of alcoholic beverages has been attested at the Jiahu archaeological site (c. Illustration of the cultivation of grapes and winemaking in Materia Dietetica ( Shiwu Bencao 食物本草), Ming dynasty (1368–1644)

Tang tricolor figurine of a Sogdian wine merchant holding a wineskin. During the Tang dynasty (618–907), China started to import grape wine from Central Asia. 爲君持一斗 Take but a measure of this wine, 往取涼州牧 And Liang-chow's rule is surely thine. 'The Song of the Grape' ( 葡萄歌), by Liu Yuxi (772–842) 自言我晉人 We men of Tsin, such grapes so fair, 種此如種玉 Do cultivate as gems most rare 釀之成美酒 Of these delicious wine we make, 令人飲不足 For which men ne'er their thirst can slake.

Grapefruit wine