Hong Kong is seriously wine crazy

Holy cow, this city has become totally wine crazy over the last few years! Wine auctions, wine festivals, winefairs, food & wine festivals, wine promotions on every corner!

Hong Kong has recently become the second Asian city (after Tokyo) to have its own Michelin guide. They've even decalred 2009 to be “The Hong Kong Food and Wine Year”! (www.discoverhongkong.com/hkfoodandwineyear/eng/index.jsp)

Check this out (its insane) ...
Total number of restaurants : 169
One star(14)
Two stars(7)
Three stars(1)

On my quest to find exciting wine retailers, I stopped off at Watson’s Wine Cellar & Wine Bar in Central (the heart of the financial district) who offer 12 wines by the glass from the same sexy Enomatic machines that we have in our Bordeaux Wine Gallery (but we have 48 wines !!).

Watson’s, which is probably the largest wine importer in Hong Kong , has 15 outlets + a successful online shop. Their Wine Bar concept is new and out of the twelve wines, three were from Bordeaux: Chateau Montrose (St. Estephe) 1996, Chateau Prieure Lichine (Margaux) 2003 and Chateau Canon la Gaffeliere (St. Emilon) 2002

The rest of the wines cames from the « rest of the world », which means a pretty tight selection, so this immediately got my head spinning about what would happen if we offered 48 top Bordeaux by the glass as we do at home.

Standing by the machines, armed with her notebook at tasting card, is Lillian Chan – a young and inquisitive banker who had actually just come from the gym and was stopping in to Watson’s on the way home to practice wine tasting. That’s what I call a means to an end !

Anyway, Lillian and I got chatting and I asked if she’d tasted the Montrose 1996 (another favourite of mine). It turned into a really fun evening as we offered each other wines from our cards and talked about how amazing it is to be able to taste wines by the glass and learn about them before paying the big bucks for a whole bottle. Like so many people in HK now, Lillian is totally hooked on wine and even wants to start a tasting club with her colleagues. I love this dynamism.

After a long day trawling the streets of HK (it’s a hard job, I know), I finally found what I was looking for - the “Tastings Wine Bar” – which was, quite frankly, a bit of a miracle. Who says that location is everything – this is literally heaven at the end of a dodgy, dark alley ! "Tastings" has 160 wines from around the world, 40 of which are served by the glass using Enomatic machines. Suddenly I realised that there are even more wine freak visionaries out there than I originally thought.

Five of the wines by the glass were Bordeaux : Chateau Haut Brion (Pessac Leognan) 1999, Chateau Cos d’Estournel (St. Estephe) 1999, Chateau Lascombes (Margaux) 2004, Chateau Lafon Rochet (St. Estephe) 1994 and Chateau Potensac (Haut-Medoc) 1996.

We started chatting with a group of twentysomethings who regularly meet up for a girl’s night out that starts with a glass of Champagne and a food platter and the finishes with fabulous Bordeaux. Its all very “Sex in the City” and I’m even more convinced than ever that we could be successful out here.
http://www.tastings.hk/