Wealth Blog | Hong Kong and China wine buffs get serious

Remember when it was enough to swirl your wine around, give it a quick sniff to look knowledgeable and then get down to the serious business of drinking it? You can’t get away with that now, these days you must know your wine or lose your social street cred.

Houghton Lee, chairman of the Hong Kong chapter of the Hong Kong Society of Wine Educators says wine is being taken seriously now, both here and on the mainland.

So who are these new wine buffs? A lot of the people attending wine training courses want to sell wine or enter the trade - a lot are mid-career changers, he says. Many more are hobbyists or doing it because of peer pressure. “You know, the boss talks about wine, so they need to learn. A lot of people are like that,” he adds. Wine education attracts people of every age, from the young to older professionals, like doctors and lawyers.

Lee just returned from taking a group from his Hong Kong chapter to sample the wines of Ningxia, North West of Xian. This wine producing area of China has caught international attention. “Whenever Jancis Robinson mentions wine in China she only mentions Ningxia,” says Lee. Of China’s many wine regions, experts seemingly think Ningxia has the most potential.

Some Ningxia wine markers are foreign, some local, but the latter mainly train in France or Australia, he adds. Local government officials are very supportive; having spotted that wine has a good future. They do a lot of investment and public relations for the province, and just hosted the first meeting of the Organisation of International Viniculture (OIV) in September.

Wine tastes are being heavily influenced by the wine education bodies, Lee believes. In the days of Henry Tang’s generation, they liked wine because it tasted good, so they bought, he says. But now drinkers will give you a reason, even at a private dinner, they will mention tannins, body, different flavours. “If you don’t say that other people don’t respect you,” he observes.