Grape cultivation promotes industrial revitalization

Walking into Lion Mountain Grape Valley in Heitang Village, Wuxi Town, Luxi County just looks like being in a green fairyland. Under the sunshine, grapes are hanging on branches.

As the grape harvest season approaches, local growers are busy weeding the land, bagging grapes, and cutting excess vines, in order to offer consumers the best grapes of Lion Mountain.

Lion Mountain is so named because its winding terrains resemble a male lion lying down. With a good location, humid climate, abundant sunshine, sandy soil rich in selenium elements, and unique microclimate, Lion Mountain is an ideal place for grape cultivation. “We mainly plant grapes in traditional ways, without using any swelling agents during the cultivation process. The green grapes produced here have same sizes, good colors, and high sugar content,” said Yang Xinyong, a large-scale grower, who is full of confidence in the development of the grape industry.

Over the years of online and offline sales, the company has gained recognition and praise from a large number of consumers, with many customers returning to the base to pick grapes every year.

Since 1991, Yang Xinyong has developed grape cultivation for more than 30 years. As one of the earliest large growers of grape cultivation, he adopts the model of company plus base plus farmer to drive sales, provide one-stop services, makes Lion Mountain grapes popular in the market, and helps surrounding farmers work nearby. At the same time, a farm industrial park corridor that integrates leisure, accommodation, catering and ecological sightseeing, a tourist service center and boutique wooden homestay inns have been built in the base.

In 2018, Lion Mountain Grape Valley was rated as a provincial five-star rural tourism area, becoming a new highlight of rural tourism in Luxi County and Xiangxi Prefecture.

11,000 mu (about 7,333 hectares) of grapes are mainly planted in Wuxi Town, Xixi Town, Pushi Town and other places of Luxi County, with an annual output value of over 100 million yuan. Among them, high-quality varieties like Kyoho grape and Muscat grape are planted in Wuxi Town. The grape industry has become a new mode in Luxi County to explore the integration of culture and tourism and promote rural revitalization.