Show time for global master of wine
At a dinner party or a restaurant where a series of wines are to be
served, Debra Meiburg asks for a cup to spit the wine into.
The 49-year-old American-born, Hong Kong-based former accountant is
one of only 253 people around the world qualified as a master of
wine.
In Melbourne to judge the 2008 Royal Melbourne Wine Show at the
showgrounds, she said that even when "off-duty" and facing "a wine
extravaganza", she opts to savour the taste of each wine served
rather than risk a concentration on the first bottles, sabotaging
her taste buds.
Although raised in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, which is
close to the Russian River Valley wine region and famed for its
pinot noir, she then had no inkling what a bordeaux or a burgundy
was.
Trained as an accountant and fluent in four languages —German,
French, Spanish, and Japanese — she left America looking for
adventure and landed a job in Hong Kong. Bereft of familiar
Californian wines, she fell back on beer, until curiosity led her to
enrol in some wine courses. In a case of "a hobby gone wild", she
became a professor of wine for four years at New York's Rochester
Institute of Technology before undertaking the master of wine exams
in London.
The "tough" four-day theory exam tested her knowledge of
viticulture, winemaking, the international business of wine and
issues such as global warming and wine and health.
Students were given 12 glasses of "anonymous" wines. They were
allowed 10 minutes a glass to taste, identify where the wine was
from, how it was made, what varieties were used, its ageing
potential and its market possibilities. She also had to complete a
dissertation on wine, making her the first master of wine in Asia.
At home in Hong Kong, she and her husband have a 5000-bottle
collection. Her favourite Australian wines are semillons "because no
one does them quite like the Australians", rieslings and cabernets.
The wine show panel is tasting its way through 3300 wines from 518
wineries for 21 awards, including the Premiers Gold Trophy, for the
best Victorian wine.