Festival promises dishes, wine to tickle the fancy

Top-rated dessert wines, premium sakes, Michelin-star dishes and award-winning vintages will test the taste buds of visitors at the Hong Kong Wine and Dine Festival, which opens today.

Running until Sunday at the West Kowloon Waterfront Promenade, the festival includes 211 wine booths and 76 food booths, up from last year's 172 and 63 respectively.

Among the exhibitors is Adelaide Cellar Door, which will offer tastings of two Australian dessert wines, Muscat and RL Buller & Son Calliope Rare Tokay, both rated 100 out of 100 by eminent wine critic Robert Parker.

The HK$950 sweet wines, both 80 years old, go well with chocolate and cheese. Unlike red and white wines which must be consumed within days of being opened, dessert wine can be kept for a year.

'They are special for their complexity, luxuriousness, richness and intensity of fruit and flavour,' winemaker Richard Buller said.

Other wines with glamorous titles or special grapes may appeal to drinkers. Jokigen - whose Kiss of Fire was the first Japanese liquor used by Louis Vuitton at its events in Japan - has prepared 100 types of sake in the Riedel Grand Tasting Pavilion, an area accessible to holders of the HK$480 Grand Wine Pass.