Raise a glass to the victors
Judgment has already been passed, but the results will not be announced until tonight, and with 37 trophies to contend for, a lot of people will be waiting with bated breath.
Now in its third year, the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong International Wine & Spirit Competition is widely recognised as the premier wine contest in Asia, and is certainly the largest.
'Judges from 18 Asian cities convened to smell, sip and spit more than 1,700 wines to award and recognise the finest entries,' says Debra Meiburg, Master of Wine and founding director of what she calls 'the world's first truly Asian wine competition'.
'Our judging panels must be both Asian-born and Asian-based, with the exception of myself and one VIP international judge.
'This year, in support of the Hong Kong Trade Development Council's partnership with Italy, our guest judge was Alberto Antonini whose career includes consulting to wineries on four continents, in addition to three winemaking ventures personally owned by Alberto and his family,' she says.
Other judges on the panel were Chris So, Jordi Chan, Sarah Wong and Tersina Shieh from Hong Kong; David Wong from Macau; Sherry Weng and Ling Yu-sen from Taiwan; Denis Lin, Fongyee Walker, Ma Huiqin, Kent Tsang and Lu Yang from the mainland; Edwin Soon from Singapore; Bang Moon-song from South Korea; Pairach Intaput from Thailand; Subhash Arora from India; Thomas Ling from Malaysia; and Yoshiji Sato from Japan.
The panel is drawn from the ranks of highly qualified sommeliers, Master of Wine candidates, wine writers and wine educators.
For the Food and Wine Pairing category there are also five - in several cases, Michelin-starred - chef judges from Hong Kong and Macau: Frankie Tang, executive Chinese chef of Spring Moon at The Peninsula; Li Shu-tim, executive chef of One Harbour Road at the Grand Hyatt; Chef Yanagita of Nadaman, at the Island Shangri-La; Mok Kit-keung, executive Chinese chef of Shang Palace at the Kowloon Shangri-La; and Zhong Zhou, celebrity chef and Chinese cuisine consultant at the MGM Macau.
'Each wine was judged by a panel of five. Top medal winners were judged by a second panel to determine which will receive a trophy award for 'Best in Class',' Meiburg says.
The pattern of entries this year was significantly different from the first two competitions, with total entries 31.86 per cent higher than last year, and the Food and Wine Pairing category increasing by 22.14 per cent.
Chile's entries went from 14 in 2010 to 62 this year - a 342.86 per cent increase - and South Africa's entries more than doubled.
Georgia, which entered no wines in 2010, this year entered 43. Other first-time entries included Romania, Moldova, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, England, Macedonia, Malta, Tunisia and Uruguay.
'A new feature added to this year's competition was the addition of a three-evening programme called Test Your Palate,' says Meiburg. 'More than 300 members of the wine trade, wine students and aficionados tasted wines that the judges had assessed earlier in the day.'
