Bacchus in Hong Kong: a Pimple on a Pumpkin(1)
David Roberts is a (not so) little Aussie battler who’s been selling wine in Aberdeen, Hong Kong, for the past four years. Aberdeen in Asia is about as far as you can get from the gateway to Speyside. Which could explain why David doesn’t mess around selling whisky at Horizon Cellars. On the subject of the Hong Kong wine market, he is remarkably candid.
“It’s like their driving – horrendous. The locals are all first generation drinkers. When me and the wife go to my in-laws over on Kowloon for a seafood feed, we’re the only people drinking wine in a restaurant of 300. It’s the old 90:10 (or could be 97:3) story: 90% of the wine is drunk by 10% of the people.”
He’s been in Hong Kong for 16 years, having arrived from Brisbane to run the Rugby Sevens. “Hong Kong is a pimple on a pumpkin” he remarks. “We’re 100 000 Caucasian ex-pats plus a couple of hundred thousand Western educated Chinese drinking wine out of a population of 7 million with another billion-odd a 90 minute drive away.”
80% of his 3000-strong customer database are ex-pats among whom his predominantly New World offerings are popular. He doesn’t bother with Chinese wine “its 80% Chilean anyway. They import in bulk and blend it with their own stuff.” SA is seriously underweight with the exception of Graham Beck, Robertson Winery and Ridgeback. “SA doesn’t have a brand – each bottle is a hand-sell. Perception is a problem; people don’t understand SA. It’s a hangover from the days of KWV when everything was thrown in a big tank. Where are the SA icons: Australia has Grange, New Zealand has Cloudy Bay?
