Wine Competitions

Hong Kong's wine scene is getting busier with international competitions heading east. First to arrive was the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Wine & Spirit Competition (CXHK IWSC), which had its inaugural competition in 2009. Led by Debra Meiburg MW, it is held annually just before the Hong Kong International Wine & Spirit Fair (HKIWSF), and the trophy winners are revealed during the Fair.

The Decanter Asia Wine Awards (DAWA) is the latest on the scene. Chaired my Jeannie Cho-Lee MW and Steven Spurrier, it was launched in 2012 and the top prizes have just been announced recently.

At competitions—they can also be called wine shows or challenges—wines are tasted blind and rated according to their quality and typicity. Medals, usually gold, silver and bronze, are given to the best in show in various categories (Best Chardonnay, Best Bordeaux blend...). The best of the best are typically awarded trophies. Results are arrived at either by consensus among the judges or by their average scores, depending on the competition.

CXHK IWSC and DAWA have a lot of similarities. Both have their roots in England and are long established and reputable. What’s more, both are geared towards Asian judges, especially the former where, apart from Debra and one international guest judge, only Asian judges are chosen. DAWA features both local Asian and Asian-based expat judges. Both recognise the benefits this brings in being closer to the market and highlighting the Asian palate. CXHK IWSC also has an Asian food and wine pairing category.

So, do these competitions really add any value?

Some sneer as they think only mass produced wines will be entered and judges may be unqualified or biased. True, a competition can only be as good as the wines entered and the standard of the judges. We have to realise that the big Bordeaux brothers or equivalent will never enter in case they don’t win, and nor will cult wine producers as they don’t have big volumes to sell. The standard of judging is directly related to the reputation of the competition. It is in the interests of the organisers that only competent judges are invited. They may have different stylistic preferences but judges of all nationalities should be able to rate a wine purely based on its quality.

I do believe competitions can be of great value in the developing markets. The results serve as guidelines for the inexperienced consumer, helping him select wine from the myriad available in the marketplace. He may not like the style of a wine but at least he knows its quality has been independently assessed. After accumulating some experience he can then move on with confidence to try other non-competition wines and be able to differentiate their quality levels for himself. Wine competitions can thus bring wine closer to consumers, helping to expand the market and so benefiting all wines whether they are entered in competitions or not.

With so many competitions around—big and small, international and local—their reputations and degree of recognition are all-important. Proactive consumer marketing of a competition is as essential as attracting entries. The more that consumers recognise a competition and its credibility the more confidence they will have in buying the winning wines. And these purchases will generate a positive feedback, attracting more and better entries next year.

And whatever the status of a competition, producers and distributors should be proud of their trophies and medals and utilise them as marketing tools. It should never be an embarrassment to tell your customers that your wines are among the best!

Click for the latest results of CXHK IWSC and DAWA.

The Wine Gangs

Call them alliances, cooperations, partnerships or .... gangs, there seem to be more and more of them in the wine world.

The Rhone Gang

The most well known in Hong Kong and Macau is probably The Douro Boys, a syndicate of five independent family estates from the Douro. Created 10 years ago, it has successfully brought Douro wines to the table and raised the overall profile of the region's still wines.

Recently, I met another syndicate: the Rhône Gang from Southern Rhône. They are Louis from Chateau de Saint Cosme, Frederic from Chateau Pesquie, Rodolphe from Chateau de Montfaucon, and Arnaud, the guy in the shadows (aka marketing and PR man). Like the Douro Boys, they each represent independent boutique family estates, and they have now been working together for 13 years. They describe themselves as ‘serious in business but funny in life’. Sharing a belief in respecting the terroir and making the best wine from their land, their collaboration means they can offer a wide range of Rhône wines that complement but do not compete with each other. Having successfully established a bridgehead in Japan they are now marching on China. Try their wines from Sinolink.

PIWOSA

The latest gang, or rather, more like a football team, is PIWOSA (Premium Independent Wineries of South Africa)—not a particularly imaginative name, perhaps, but the intention is good. As the name suggests, it is an association of some of South Africa's best wine producers. Unhappy with the under-representation of premium South African wine in international markets, 15 of the largely family owned producers from across the Western Cape formed this alliance last month (January 2013) with a clear objective of raising international perceptions of the top end of the South African wine spectrum. Like other gangs, they plan to tramp the globe spreading the word. I have tried most of the wines and there is no doubting their quality. Some, but not yet all, are available in Hong Kong.

With most well-known wine brands owned by big corporations with global marketing muscle, alliances like these among smaller players make sense. By collaborating they create a bigger noise, yet each member still retains his individuality and style. A well-chosen name (Douro Boys, The Rhône Gang) helps lend a human face. With today’s consumers increasingly seeing wine as a lifestyle product, this personal touch certainly brings life to wine, and helps us differentiate them in a crowded marketplace.

I would love to see more of these gangs from other countries. Pedro Parra, a terroir consultant from Chile, is considering something similar with like-minded winemakers there. Perhaps we could organise friendly inter-gang matches one day?

Eddie on the right track with fun-and-enjoyment mantra

Photo courtesy of Ali Nicol

Did you know that even though there are no vineyards in Hong Kong we do have a handful of winemakers living here? Apart from myself—although I don’t think I should really be counted since I don’t make wine for a living at the moment—there is Eddie McDougall, a Eurasian Hong Kong-born flying winemaker who makes his own wine in Australia using grapes from King Valley and the Pyrenees and is the owner of The Flying Winemaker, a wine store cum bar cum school in Lan Kwai Fong.

Eddie had a series of activities lined up for the launch of his latest wine recently. The wine was originally named Umami, but for technical reasons he could not register that name so chose to market it under his own name: Eddie McDougall. So don’t be confused when you see the name Umami in a much more prominent position than his own on the label.

At one of the launch events organised by the The Elements Club, we had four of Eddie's wines with a Chinese dinner. I particularly liked the Frederica’s Pinot Gris 2010. The wine was barrel-fermented in old barrels, lees-stirred and matured for eight months. The flavours are intense yet well-integrated. Its structure and relatively high alcohol of 13.8% make it a nice pairing with heavier seafood or stir-fried pork dishes (we had it with wok-fried prawns with Sichuan chilli sauce and deep-fried scallops coated with taro crust 川汁蝦球，荔茸帶子).

Little Pig Rosé 2010, using the nickname given him by his grandmother, has an attractive pale pink salmon colour. I was expecting a soft delicate wine but instead my first impression was of something savoury and structured. Eddie explained that the wine, from Merlot grapes, underwent cool temperature fermentation and was aged for 12 months, so no wonder it developed the characters that Eddie highly recommends be paired with Cantonese style barbecued pork (叉燒). A delicate rosé would not stand up to the pork's robust flavour.

Eddie’s wine philosophy is that wine should be fun and enjoyable and that good quality wine is not necessarily expensive and out of reach. I totally agree. Indeed this is what I would like to promote in Hong Kong—a wine culture that values quality over price, enjoyment over pretentiousness, and, above all, sharing over showing off. I would love to see that one day, hopefully in the not too distant future, it is the norm that consumers have their rice box dinner at home in front of the television with a glass of wine rather than a can of soft drink. I have been discussing this with a few people recently, including Eddie and Betsy from Northeast and I think they share the sentiment. I hope we can start to generate enough support from other like-minded people to make this happen. Let me know if you agree.

New Year Resolution

No doubt some of us still nursing New Year hangovers today have made a resolution to cut down on drinking. I would like to encourage an alternative, more positive stance—make a resolution to start really appreciating wine drinking and exploring the world of wine.

There are so many labels on the wine shelves, and this confuses a lot of people, so they usually retreat into buying just the regions, grape varieties and brands they are familiar with. If you are one of them, you’re missing out on a lot of fun. To begin discovering the wine world, the key hurdle we need to cross is to understand what we mean by ‘quality’ and how to judge it. So let’s take a look at that (and bear in mind that good quality wine exists at all price levels so it doesn’t need to break the bank).

Professionals judge wine quality by four criteria: balance, length, intensity and complexity (BLIC for short). Start with balance: the three components that form the backbone of white wine are acidity, alcohol and sweetness, with red wine having a fourth, tannin, which can be from either grape or wood. These components must be well integrated with the fruit and no one of them should jump out above the others. If you immediately feel the heat of alcohol in a wine, it is out of balance. Similarly, if all you can taste is wood or tannin, again it is out of balance. Some people shun German Riesling because of a perceived sweetness, but a good quality one will have enough acidity to support the sweetness and will not be cloying.

Length, the second criterion, is the pleasant aroma—not the drying tannin—that stays in the throat after you swallow. The longer you can feel the wine, the better quality it is. This after taste usually lasts from a good 4-6 seconds to well over 30 seconds. Some wine may be pleasant to drink but its aroma disappears as soon as you swallow: its length is short, indicating lesser quality.

Intensity is probably the most difficult criterion to understand. It is not about the intensity on the nose, but on the palate. Take a wine designed for ageing, like a Barolo. When young, such a wine may be closed (ie, you can’t smell anything) but you should still be able to feel the concentration and density on the palate. This, together with the length and the balance, is the clue that the wine has the potential to develop and open up later.

The final criterion, complexity, is about the group of aromas that you can taste. Fruit aromas include citrus, apple, floral, white fruit, yellow fruit, tropical fruit, red fruit and black fruit, and these can be complemented by secondary characters such as herbal, spicy, nutty, raisiny and vanilla. Someone may impress you by saying they can taste blackberries, blackcurrant, blueberries and black cherries in a wine. Well, just remember that those are all black fruits, so there’s really only one aroma class and therefore that wine is not complex! On the other hand, if you can feel black fruits, spices and vanilla, that’s already three categories of aroma and the wine is reasonably complex.

For me, balance is the most important element. A wine can be simple, with just some citrus and apple aromas and a 3-5 second aftertaste, but if it is balanced and costs less than HK$150/bottle, it is a good quality entry level wine. Some Chardonnays from Casablanca, Chile fit the bill. In contrast, some wines that cost $500-600 per bottle may exhibit four or five types of aroma and have a good length yet somehow the oak or alcohol stand out; they are not balanced and I would not consider them as good quality for what they cost.

Armed with this technique, you can begin to get out of the comfort zone and start exploring different wine regions and grape varieties and what styles of wine you like best. In fact, you don’t need to confine yourself to only one style of wine as there are different styles for different occasions and food pairing.

Hong Kong is not short of wine tasting courses, ranging from the basic to the advanced. Many people like to take one of two courses to give them a head start. WSET (Wine and Spirits Education Trust) is the biggest wine education provider in the world and has developed a series of qualifications for the wine trade and wine consumers. WSET pioneered the Systematic Tasting Approach, which is a good framework for wine appreciation. There are over 20 WSET providers in Hong Kong. There are also courses aimed at wine lovers with a less formal yet still structured approach. Whatever courses you might choose, it is important to learn from enthusiastic lecturers. While I don’t know all the wine lecturers in town, I do respect JC Viens and Ian Symonds. Not only are they professional, they are passionate, which I think is the essential attribute for a lecturer. Remember we all enjoyed our Mathematics or Chemistry at school more if the teachers were excited about the subject? Wine, likewise, is a subject that needs a passionate teacher or mentor to unlock its mysteries.

Nevertheless, attending wine courses is not mandatory to appreciate wine. All you need is confidence and trust in your palate. The BLIC quality formula will guide you through the maze. If you taste one grape variety or region a week from now, you will have tried 52 wines by  the end of the year. And you’ll appreciate wine a lot more than if you just guzzle 52 bottles over Christmas.

Abridged version was published in the South China Morning Post on 03 January 2013