Bacchus in Hong Kong: Eight Mysteries(1)
After a week spent eating and drinking very well in Hong Kong, I am left with more questions than answers.
Eight is such an auspicious number for Chinese people that on 8/8/88 the lights in the newsroom of the South China Morning Post were dimmed and platters of chopped up suckling pig were carried in for a celebration. Allowing rookie Canadian journo Ross Meder (now turned Australian wine importer) to remember his arrival in the “fragrant harbor” of Hong Kong with a happy event. So if you’re going to produce a list of wine mysteries of the East, there should surely be eight.
Mystery #1: Chinese Wine is a Dragon
China plants as many new vines each year as comprise the SA national vineyard, yet the only Chinese wine I tasted last week was Deep Blue 06 from Grace Vineyards on the Cathay Pacific flight into Hong Kong. An experience the airhostess of colleague Helen Savage flying in from London advised against.
The observation by wine educator Kevin Tang, that “planting in China is just hearsay” notwithstanding, at each place we visited I dutifully asked for China wine and drew a blank each time: Berry Bros. & Rudd, the HK Jockey Club, Watson’s Wine Cellars, Crown Wine Cellars and Ross Meder’s Margaret River for Asia – but at least Ross has an excuse.
Even that energetic wine nationalist Simon Tam was temporarily out of tasting stock while New World importer David Roberts asked “why would you want to drink it? It’s 80% Chilean anyway.” A sentiment echoed by private client advisor James Rowell from Altaya Wines who noted “there is some truly shocking stuff made being made in China, often from non-noble cultivars. The whole business of wine labeling is very suspect: every red wine calls itself Cabernet Sauvignon. No one wants to drink Chinese wine. In the 4½ years I was managing the first branch of Watson’s Wine Cellar, the only people who ever asked for Chinese wine were Western tourists.”
Perhaps Chinese wines are dragons, which as John Lanchester pointed out in Fragrant Harbour (Faber, 2002), have an annoying habit of making themselves invisible at will.
