The country's first winery in Shan state is winning plaudits for its reds, whites and particularly its rosés, and it sales are booming.
The Aythaya - or Myanmar - Vineyard began marketing the fruits of five years' hard labour late in 2004. It is just about to harvest the grapes for its fourth vintage, from which it hopes to sell 100,000 bottles this year.
Visitors to the 40-acre (16-hectare) estate, set in the rolling hills of the eastern Burma's fabled Blue Mountains, have noted that the glorious aspect owes more to Tuscany than the tropics.
The well-drained limestone soils at a height of 1,300m (4,270ft), moderate temperatures and 150 straight days of winter sun offer the kind of growing conditions found in areas of southern France and Italy.
The winery is the brainchild of Bert Morsbach, 69, once a mining consultant from Dusseldorf. After studies of the area he gambled with £50,000 of his savings and imported some classic European grape varieties to the region in 1999.
The results nurtured by his chief wine-maker, Hans Leiendecker, are beginning to match Mr Morsbach's wildest dreams. Of the 2004 Aythaya Sauvignon Blanc one critic wrote: "This wine should worry France".
But the estate's bestseller is the rosé made from grapes from its Italian Moscato vines. At £4.50 a bottle, the chilled wine accompanies spicy Burmese food well and most of the stock sells to the country's tourist industry that caters to foreign visitors.
Mr Morsbach, who intends to add a sparkling Proseco to the winery's repertoire this year, has his sights set on international sales. He exports all over the world, except to Europe he says "there's too much wine already".
Burmese farmers around the vineyard are being contracted to grow the extra grapes to meet the wine-maker's ambition. "Wine-drinking in China is exploding," said Mr Morsbach. "It's a huge and growing market that we hope to tap."
