Bacchus in Hong Kong: Eight Mysteries(4)
Mystery #6: Do the Numbers Stack Up
Christopher Wong, Deputy Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development, presented some impressive statistics on wine growth forecasts for Asia (excluding Japan, a country Simon Tam admitted “no one can understand”). They presumably played a large role in prompting the HK government to abandon import duties last year and seem to be based largely on VinExpo/IWSR figures from 2006: the Asian market (excluding Japan) to grow from US$7 billion in 2007 to US$17 billion in 2012 to US$ 27 billion in 2017. Imports expected to reach US$ 1.5 billion by 2017 but these forecasts were made before the financial tsunami struck.
Now all bets are off with Boris de Vroomen, MD of Moët Hennessy Diageo, admitting to a sales decline in Champagne (David Roberts says a 60% fall over the Christmas period would not be far wrong) with “buyers trading down and collectors buying less of trying to liquidate part or all of their collections.” Just how robust a market in which only 17% of wine sales are sub-US$5 versus a global figure of 70%, remains to be seen.
Mystery #7: Who killed Manfred Schoeni
The 2009 edition of the Platter wine guide fails to list Ashanti as a producer while the telephone number in the 2008 edition has been disconnected. Raymond Tam, facilitator for our trip to HK had told us proudly that Ashanti was owned by HK investors.
My sources tell me that Ashanti was bought in the nineties by a consortium of 30 HK ex-pat and Chinese investors headed by art collector Manfred Schoeni who made his money buying art in China before it was popular to do so. The Schoeni Gallery in Old Bailey Street, HK, is now managed by daughter Nicole after Manfred was hacked to death in the Philippines villa la Dolce Vita of German property developer Antonne Faustenhause in 2004. Chopped up along with the Filipino maid was designer John James Hamish Cowperthwaite, son of Sir John Cowperthwaite, credited with setting up Hong Kong’s financial system while serving as financial secretary from 1961-71, according to The Times.
