Wine lover chases the obscure grape

Next week, Jean-Charles Viens is taking his final master of wine exam in Sydney. Then he's planning a holiday in Bali. Nothing remarkable about the latter until you discover the aim of the break is to visit another winery.

While some of us may be willing to venture across Hong Kong to find a new wine, Viens has been as far as an oasis in the Namibian desert.

Originally from Montreal, Canada, Viens is a wine teacher, founder of wine school Grande Passione, head of the Hong Kong Wine Century Club and has a day job heading a company trading bicycles. The wine club is open to anyone who has tasted 100 or more different grape varieties. In its seven years of existence in Hong Kong it has recruited 25 members, two have tasted 300 or more grapes varieties and four have tasted more than 200 (including Viens himself and co-founder, sommelier and wine writer Nellie Ming Lee).

Drinkers hoping to join the Century Club are allowed to drink blends as well as single variety wines. Viens' motivation lies in finding well-made wines as much as name dropping obscure grape varieties - that Namibian vineyard Neuras, irrigated by three underground springs and cooled by breezes from the Atlantic, turns out to produce a perfectly respectable cabernet sauvignon and merlot blend.

Viens, who is 45 and has been in Hong Kong for 20 years, also says he has noticed increased curiosity from students.

In a recent class on Italian sparkling wine he found the students were familiar with franciacorta and prosecco but had not heard of lambrusco. As with other previously unknown grape varieties, this created a stir in his classroom, provoking questions about origins and availability. Student demand has led him to expand his original four unit class to 27 units.