Learning Curve

I'm going to tell you a little story about how wine gets done in Hong Kong.

First some backstory: I was in Australia not long ago where I met biodynamic vigneron David Ritchie. Ritchie's Delatite Winery is nestled at the base of the Mt Buller ski area and is an Australian version of an Alpine Winery. I don't think they're particularly well known beyond their immediate region (so far...) but I was served one of their sparkling Gewürztraminers (yes, Gewürztraminer) at a luncheon a few years ago. It was so precise, so unique and so utterly unexpected that I remember having to leave the table and sit with it in an out of the way corner for a brief spell.

When I met Ritchie, I asked him if he had a distributor in Hong Kong. He said he did, but they only brought in a few of his wines and none of the sparkling ones. I'm sure my expression was crestfallen, but then he said, "Although there is this guy..."

"This guy" turned out to be Alvis Kwan. David introduced me to him via e-mail. It turns out Alvis is a building engineer who specializes in ventilation and air-conditioning systems for commercial and large residential buildings. Alvis is also interested in wine. Alvis spent some time in Australia where he met someone who now manages wine sales for Delatite. So with a view towards an unspecific, future venture in the wine business, Alvis decided upon an experimental import of a pallet of Delatite wines. A pallet is roughly 56 cases.

He figured he'd sell them to his friends and the odd nut like me who showed up at his door. Maybe put them in a storefront he bought with his 401k. Or perhaps even sell them into the Mainland. He figured the only way you can figure out the wine business is by dipping your toe into 672 bottles -- a palate's worth.

In Hong Kong -- Tom Wark, are you listening? You'll like this part -- there is no 3-tier system. No divide between importer, distributor and retailer. And, as of 2008, no customs duty. If you're an HVAC engineer and you want to import a large quantity of wine, then you just do it.

How about that?

So I arranged to buy a case of sparkling wine and a case of white wines for the Lab, as well as a couple of cases of whites for a friend who grew up in view of Mt Buller.

I drove out myself to meet Alvis at his office in San Po Kong, an industrial section of Kowloon perhaps best known as the site of deadly riots that grew, with help from the Cultural Revolution, out of a non-violent workers' protest at an artificial flower factory in 1967.

I paid less for the wine than I might have paid had I bought them at the winery's cellar door because my only middle-man is a building engineer with an office in San Po Kong.

A Little Help with Tasting

Sorry for the long delay between reports. I'm adjusting to the local culture, and nobody really does jack in Hong Kong during the summer. In fact, most of the expat crowd bails the island. But Fall is here. I know this, not because the temperature has changed. It hasn't. It's still basically a rice cooker beyond the air-conditioned confines of the Lab. But I know the season has turned because there's a line at my favorite coffee shop in the morning and all the tables are filled with women who don't play tennis but wear diamond tennis bracelets anyway.

Another aspects of Hong Kong culture I've been adjusting to is the abundance of skilled domestic labor from the Philippines. The market is heavily regulated by the regional authorities. But if you can maneuver through the forms and bureaucracy, you can get what' s known in the local parlance as a "helper."

I decided to get two.

Because I think the helper is a fantastic concept. Now that my responsibilities are reduced at home, I have a lot more time to drink. The Philippines should probably be making a better effort to export this thing globally.

At the Lab, we've been cataloguing and organizing the wines shipped to our new Guangzhou cellars. We've run a few tests on overseas shipping as well which we'll report on soon. But I grabbed an orphan bottle and brought it home last night, to see whether we can further reduce labor costs at the Lab.

I'm growing weary of writing tasting notes. So I poured a glass of a recent vintage Burgundy from bio-dynamic stalwart Hubert Lamy for one of the helpers and asked her what she thinks.

"This is very good, sir," was her reply.

I think she had it about right.

The Kindness of Taxi Drivers

I was on my way to a wine dinner recently. As I left my office, I grabbed an engraved laguiole opener that I was presented at some milestone or another the Lab had reached.

It's impressive hardware, and, yes, I admit, I was planning to show off a bit with it. It's not like I was going someplace where there wouldn't be corkscrews.

At the event, I reached for my opener, only to find it gone.

I knew immediately that my trophy opener had fallen from my pocket in the cab I had taken to dinner. I was momentarily devastated. I quickly strategized a few ways to drop not so subtle hints to the staff about my Christmas present for this year and tried to soldier on.

You can well imagine my surprise and delight when the next morning, arriving back at my office, my assistant presented me with the opener. Having found it after I exited the cab, the driver of the taxi had returned it to where he'd picked me up and left it with security at the building.

Hoping I might offer this generous and thoughtful man a reward for his kind act, I went downstairs to ask security myself if he had perhaps left a card or contact details.

He had not.

I was unable to offer my thanks directly.

But I am very grateful.

A Curious Sweat Shop

I was recently lured out of the Lab to attend a local wine event that promised fine wines, vintage cars, diamond jewelry and an ex-Miss Hong Kong.

This seemed to be all the necessary ingredients for a quintessential Far East wine outing.

The invitation failed to mention that the event would be held in a garage in Kwun Tong, an industrial section of Kowloon, and that the temperature inside would be well over 90° F (32+ °C) even at 9 o'clock at night. Also not detailed on the invitation was the reality that the last bottle of white wine would be already half gone when we arrived. Or that the ex-Miss Hong Kong was actually an ex-Miss Canada. Or someone claiming to be an ex-Miss Canada. I searched "Miss Canada" on Google and fruitlessly scrolled through 20 pages of images in failed hopes I might find her.

Curious editorial aside: the search did return a picture of Robert Redford, one of an alpaca and this shot of a scary looking dude who would seem, at a glance, to have little to do with Miss Canada.

The part about the vintage cars was as advertised.

If I were a practitioner of understatement, I would say it was a curious event.

It was at least that.

The diamond jewelry was provided by a man who practices an orthodox formulation of Judaism, so roughly 1/3 of the sweat-drenched crowd wore yarmulkes. I'm sure it was the heat in the garage, but I had flashes back to my childhood when my buddy Howard Goldstein was bar mitzvah'd on a scorching July day in Arizona.

Another third of the crowd seemed to be photographers; the alleged ex-Miss Canada must have a sensational publicist to get a throng of paparazzi out in the late night Kowloon swelter.

The wines were provided by Altruistic Boutique Wines, a Hong Kong / Beijing based wine importer who seem keen to give a portion of their profits away to charitable organizations. The company's Managing Director, Rai Cockfield, was pouring the wines, or what was left of them, himself. He's an ex-Lehman Brothers banker who has left finance to chase Dionysus. He and his partner have assembled a very good list of small, mostly California, producers. I'm not sure what's the point of marrying philanthropy and wine sales. But the philanthropy as marketing seemed one of the least random details of the evening, so I let it pass without debate. Besides I didn't work at Lehman, so I have less to atone for.

He poured me a taste from the dregs of the final bottle of white wine. The 2007 8 Chardonnay from Vineyard 7&8. It was... curious. And gratifyingly cold.

Vineyard 7&8 is a boutique, ineptly-named winery in Northern California. The Chardonnay had nice cut on the attack, but way too much new French Oak everywhere else.

A check on the winery website leads me to believe, the owners are in fact Thurston Howell III and his wife, Lovey. They have outsourced both the viticulture and the wine-making, being one of several wineries to have have employed Luc Morlet since he left his illustrious post as wine-maker at the illustrious Peter Michael Winery. Morlet recently announced his own private label, so the skeptic in me thinks the Howells will soon be needing new staff. I'm sure the Professor could figure out how to stop malolactic fermentation before the wine became indistinguishable from a dairy product.

I couldn't bear to drink the red, a Cabernet Sauvignon also from California, in the dense, humid heat of the garage.

So instead I wandered around, dodging photographers and grease-jockeys, wondering about the tax advantages that were no doubt realized by pretending your antique car collection was a working garage.

Perhaps that's unfair.

Maybe it's not a tax-hedge?

Maybe the cars are merely a Hong Kong financier's indulgence to one of his many elaborate hobbies. A list which would seem to include not only vintage cars, but also diamond jewelry, culty New World wines and...

the Miss Universe pageant.

Update from the Lab Cafeteria

I know, I know. I'm falling behind on my Lab reports.

Look, there's a lot of work involved relocating a cutting-edge research facility. Plus I'm in a new sphere of influence and much in demand. If it's not this panel, it's that presentation.

But I'm aware of what my priorities should be and I'll soon have myriad reports to deliver.

In the meanwhile, I've been busy looking for a chef for the Lab's cafeteria. As you can imagine, this is an important detail in the Lab's operations. It's not just anyone who can whip up a paring menu for orange wines after all.

So I've been roaming the back streets and alleys of Hong Kong, looking for someone with the right skill set and disposition. My search carried me to ABC Kitchen, which isn't so much a restaurant as it's a food stall. On the uppermost floor of the Queen Street Cooked Food Market in Sheung Wan.

Whatever end of the grocery shopping spectrum Whole Foods is on, Cooked Food and Wet Markets are at the other end. The U.V. to the Whole Food's Infra-red. The ground floor is typically populated by half naked men who are cutting the heads off chickens or bashing huge fish into bloody pulp and slightly resentful looking women sitting next to fresh produce that might have been grown on Mars (dragon fruit?). If there is a second floor, it's usually a mixed bag of service-oriented stalls (shoe repair, dry cleaning) and small stores. The top floor is where the Cooked Food section always is. It often looks like a backwater Bingo Parlor sponsored by Marlboro.

So my expectations were low.

But the ABC Kitchen was sensational. They have a wine list that would be unexceptional except for the fact that finding a wine list at a Cooked Food Market is enormously exceptional. They pour a House Red and a House White that changes with supply, and I thought that a charming detail.

Joe the Owner was trained at M on the Fringe, which managed for 20 years to be Hong Kong's hippest restaurant. Joe loves having his own gig. And he seems to really enjoy cooking for the grandmothers who hang out at the Cooked Food Market.

So I am not confident I will be able to lure him away.

But I'll need to come back several times to try.

The Motherlode!

Here's another story about how Hong Kong works.

I needed to outfit my new executive suite. My efforts to buy John Thain's office furniture on eBay were unsuccessful (maybe I bid too low, but I'm not a believer in antique toilets; I'm long progress) so I went out into Hong Kong in search of furniture. In general, the closer you get to the Chinese border, the better the deal. But I don't have time for bargain hunting. I'm a busy guy. Moving an oenology lab to a foreign country eats a lot of time.

So I went to Horizon Plaza.

Horizon Plaza is a non-descript office building in an industrial section of Ap Lei Chao (a small island connected to Hong Kong by a bridge). It caters mostly to locals and houses 28 levels of furniture stores. It's overwhelming. 28 floors of furniture! I find the place makes you physically dizzy. There is also a small appliance outlet (10th floor), an Italian delicatessen (6th floor) and an Armani outlet (22nd floor).

And on the 16th floor, wedged between a ceiling fan supplier and a custom mattress manufacturer, I discovered the finest collection of artisanal Champagnes I have ever seen in a single location.

Vouette et Sorbée.

Vilmart & Cie (nearly the full range!)

André Clouet

Bereche et Fils

Larmandier-Bernier

Leclerc-Briant

Diebolt-Vallois

Cédric Bouchard

David Leclapart (the full range!)

And more. That's just the short list.

I still have bruises from pinching myself.

Boutique Wines specializes in small producers from New Zealand and Australia. Their book features some outstanding producers, like Cullen from Margaret River and Felton Road from Central Otago. But there are few artisanal independents. No cult stars or natural wine freaks.

The Champagne list is another story. It's one of those lists that is easier to describe by who's not on it. When I suggested that I was a big fan of the wines of Benoit Tarlant, the Brut Zero in particular, Peter Nicholas, General Manager for BW, said, "We'll try to source those for you." How's that for service? I bet Peter knows how to get to the post office.

I have no idea why Boutique Wines is hidden amongst the sofas and dining sets of Horizon Plaza. And I don't care. I only hope the birds don't eat the trail of bread crumbs I left from the store to the doors of my office.

On the spot, I decided to spend the budget allocated for office wall sconces on Champagne. I've been looking for Leclapart's wines for at least 3 years. I'll drink them in the dark if I have to.

Oh, and there's one more thing about how things work in Hong Kong. Boutique Wines delivers your order to your house for no extra charge.

Grand Opening: Guangzhou Labs

I admit it has taken us a bit longer than expected to get things going in Hong Kong, but we are finally open for experiment in Guangzhou.

I'm not exactly sure why the delays, but here's a little insight into how Hong Kong works.

I took the elevator down to the lobby of our new building. I asked the woman working at reception where the post office was.

With a bright smile, she effectively told me, "You can't get there from here."

It was too far to walk. Too short to taxi. There was a bus, but the stop wasn't convenient and you might have to transfer to get back. She got out maps to show me. A colleague joined her. Both of them trying their best to be helpful as they delivered the disappointing news that the post office was beyond my reach.

By the time I stepped away from the desk, even their manager had joined the discussion.

I thanked them for their help and trudged slowly back to the elevator banks. I was dejected, my disappointment obvious in the slump of my shoulders. I could feel their pitying stares on my back, when one of them asked, "What you need at Post Office?"

Stamps, I said.

"Oh, stamps! We have stamps right here."

Hong Kong is efficient. Hong Kongers are eager to be helpful, almost obsequiously so. But it helps to know how to ask for what you want, directly and without abstraction.

Knee Jerk

Okay, okay, I haven't really been in Hong Kong long enough to make general pronouncements, but I've noticed something. It's something similar to everything you hear about the Chinese and wine. It's something obvious.

So maybe I'm just joining the chorus, saying nothing original.

It would hardly be the first time that's happened.

But as far as I can tell, in Hong Kong, "fine wine" means Bordeaux. And that may be understating the fact. It may be closer to true to say that just "wine" means Bordeaux. The grocery store shelves are full of it. I've seen huge Bordeaux displays at department stores. And the wine shops sell little else (unless they specialize in something besides Bordeaux, but even the Italian wine shop I visited had a Bordeaux section).

As far as I can tell it's pretty much all anybody drinks, except for some industrial, grand marque Champagne. I was at dinner last night, a very cool dive bar meets Thai restaurant, right on the beach at Deep Water Bay. A big group at another table had brought their own wines. Do I really need to tell you what it was?

As it happens, I don't drink much Bordeaux. The best examples are prohibitively expensive. There's not many natural producers in the region. There's no overlooked areas of great terroir. It's just not my thing.

So I'm screwed, right?

Not so fast.

At my local grocery store, alongside the overflowing rows of low to really low-tier Bordeaux (pictured above) and right next to the Veuve Clicquot (what else would Bordeaux lovers reach for when a festive mood strikes?), I found 3 bottles of Fleury's Brut Rose. A 100% Pinot Noir, rosé de saignée, made by Champagne's first (maybe) converts to biodynamics.

Best part? It's on sale for the Hong Kong dollar equivalent of forty bucks. Apparently, biodynamic, grower Champagne isn't a big seller with the local crowd.

Like shooting fish in a barrel of Bordeaux. N'est-ce

pas?

The Starstreet Winewalk

I have quite a bit of house-keeping to attend to. I need to write up the Lab's farewell to Los Angeles "It's All About the Dirt" dinner. I need to tell you about the bounty from the Lab's Yard Sale. There's even an installment of our historical drinking series, What Would Czar Nicholas Drink?, to draft.

But before I get to any of that, a report from the other side.

Almost as soon as I arrived in Hong Kong, Li Ping arranged for tickets to the sold out Winewalk on Starstreet. Sponsored by the magazine Time Out, the event was a benefit for the Hong Kong Women's Foundation and featured a number of restaurants and wine shops in the Starstreet Precinct of Wan Chai.

It was a great way to become quickly acquainted with a quirky, near-downtown (what HKers call Central) neighborhood. A host of participating restaurants opened their doors to serve appetizers and, unfortunately, mostly forgettable table wines.

There's no point in

reviewing the specifics, is there? (but do let me know if you need Starstreet restaurant reviews.)

The one thing I found most interesting is that I didn't recognize a single wine. The closest thing to something even vaguely familiar was a white I've never seen in the US from gigantico Spanish producer, Torres (perhaps best known for their red wine that comes with a little plastic bull attached to the neck). The Vina Esmerelda was a not unpleasant, overtly perfumed mix of Catalonian Moscatel and Gewürtztraminer. I slugged it down like an old friend.

Given global distribution realities, it's not entirely surprising to encounter a different set of brands in Asia. But even at a wine shop that specialized in Margaret River Wines -- a region I know well; I spent my honeymoon there -- I didn't recognize a single producer on the shelves.

Too soon to tell if this is a trend or a Starstreet anomaly.

For what it's worth, the wine of the event for me was a fancy/artisanal Southern Rhone poured at the roofbar of the fancy/not at all artisanal French bistro, Le Cepage. The 2008 Les Sorcieres from Clos des Fees, a moderniste blend of Grenache (corr.), Carignan and Syrah. Fruit-forward, and perhaps slightly over-oaked, the wine was a velvety blend of red fruits and sandalwood. Another example of the emergence of Roussillon as an appellation to watch for.