Meet SA's biggest China

Collecting the harvest at Meerlust, above; an estate where Hong Kong-based Debra Meiburg, right, once worked

Debra Meiburg has lived in Hong Kong for 25 years. Besides being a Master of Wine, one of only 273 people worldwide to hold the honour, the native of California also knows about going with the flow.

For HK is the undisputed centre of the fine-wine universe - last year more than 40% of global wine auction turnover was channelled through the territory of skyscrapers. It is a gateway to China whose middle-class consumers are expected to outnumber Europe's within the decade. As such it is the Shangri-La for SA producers battling financial headwinds in their largest export market, the UK.

Meiburg is no stranger to SA, claiming distant kinship with Hannes Myburgh of Meerlust. She's a self-confessed "fan of SA wine" who has visited the Cape seven times, worked a harvest at Meerlust and competes in the Argus cycle race, dodgy ankle permitting. Her latest project is a TV series taking viewers around the world, matching food and wine. We caught up over lunch at the China Club, the retro-chic, Shanghai-style club and restaurant, on Hong Kong Island.

"Bordeaux and Burgundy are easy," Meiburg said, "but what recipe would you choose for SA? Is braai too kitsch?"

This reminded me of the presentation of the boffin of boerekos, François Ferreira, the previous weekend. Ferreira shocked and rocked the Absa Calitzdorp Port & Wine Festival with the claim that "boerekos doesn't exist, it's just modified Cape Malay cooking. Look at bobotie: boereboontjies are just Malay boonchies."

His food and wine pairing extravaganza was called Boerekos, Port, Bollywood & Ballroom, and pitted frikkadels in a saffron sauce with stamp mielies against Tinta Chocolate (a wood-influenced Tinta Barocca) from Boplaas Estate; and hake fishcakes with a lentil salad and pineapple achar matched with an Axe Hill White Port made from Chenin Blanc which, in another age of maiden aunts, might have been mistaken for a Fino Sherry.

The soup was a spicy turmeric bean and potato served in a koffiekoppie, one of the tasty ironies of the New South Africa. For Bollywood had come to the Calitzdorp NG Kerksaal (church hall) and the beautiful appliqué tapestries with their exposition of biblical parables make me think of moneychangers in the temple and confirmed that gastronomy is truly the religion of the day.

The soup, meanwhile, would not have been out of place at the China Club among the dim sums, congees and crispy chicken feet.

"SA wine would work in China," continued Meiburg. "The style fits and the price is right, which is not the case for most California wines. In addition, the Chinese government is keen to pursue closer relations with SA, which will help."

Chinese prefer to entertain at restaurants - "never at home; you choose a menu, bring the wine and show your friends just how much you love them", Meiburg informs me.

Imagine a private room at the China Club with Meiburg as sommelier and Ferreira as chef - a pairing made in marketing heaven.