Hong Kong, as we are all sick of hearing, is now 'Asia's wine hub', which makes it a bitter irony that a glass of quaffable wine in a restaurant often costs as much as the retail price of the entire bottle.
We all accept, of course, that restaurateurs are entitled to make a fair profit. But we also know daylight - or candle-light - robbery when we see it. It is an infuriating anomaly that, in a town where imports of wine are now completely tax-free, restaurants - particularly those in hotels - charge some of the steepest wine mark-ups in the world.
It also reflects a broken promise. One of the bodies that lobbied most vocally for the removal of the tax was the hotel industry. Ten years ago, in a submission - unsuccessful at the time - to the government opposing the raising of wine tax from 60 per cent to 80 per cent, the Hong Kong Hotels Association said: 'Wine prices in hotels have been a source of complaint by visitors because they compare our prices with their own prices at home, which are free from duty.'
That is misleading, to say the least. Most countries impose import duties on wine, and if the hotels were troubled by complaints about their prices - of which the ad valorem duty was a minor part of the total unless the bottle was of a very high value - they had only to reduce them.
The association continued: 'If society accepts wine consumption as part of personal lifestyle and respects visitors' rights and privileges to such lifestyle, without having to pay excessive wine duty to enjoy them, then there should be greater consideration on the part of the government to seek alternative revenue to meet their budgets.'
The implication of that statement is clear, despite the mangled English. It is that if the tax were to be removed, the price of wine in hotel bars and restaurants to consumers would be significantly reduced. It took a few years, but eventually the Hong Kong government did its bit. So, when will the hotel industry honour its obligations? A pretty safe bet would be never.