DISQUS

Thanks, Leo. From a sommelier perspective, the customer is always right, of course. Say, for example, a customer thinks a wine is corked (even if it isn't), the wine should be replaced immediately. The restaurant can still use the rejected bottle, either as wine by the glass or for training or even for the kitchen (if wine is used there). With chilling heavy reds, there's not much that a sommelier can do. After all, if the customer wants it, the sommelier must be accommodating. I have not seen widespread chilling of heavy reds in Beijing, however, and the above post details an isolated incident. In the Beijing summer, it might well make sense to lightly chill Pinot Noirs, Gamays and, say, Loire Cabernet Francs or Valpolicella, particularly for an outdoor tasting or other event. Your Hong Kong sommelier will have to grin and bear it in all likelihood - although, in the high humidity of a Hong Kong summer (as you know well) some light chilling of certain reds might be advisable, though perhaps not in an air-conditioned environment.

Thanks, Dylan. I fully agree. I take these kind of things on the chin. I taught at Cambridge for 5 years (essentially one-on-one or very small classes) and more recently have taught at Tsinghua, one of China's top universities here in Beijing. Again, I have very bright students, but English is obviously their second language; so I've had to change my teaching style a lot whilst dealing with much larger class sizes, of course (as well as giving lectures to several hundred). In our wine classes this has actually really helped in learning how to explain things where English is again often the second language (I never use idioms, metaphors, other tropes or turns of phrase). At the same time, outside the likes of Tsinghua, Cambridge and other such illustrious schools, I'm really seeing how people learn in different ways (if this is true of super-bright students too, at least, as a teacher, you usually don't have to focus on how they learn). With a wide range of Chinese wine lovers/private clients, wine business people and other enthusiasts taking our courses, we now use the whole gamut of learning aids (PPTs, DVDs, some great stuff off YouTube for things like remuage etc., pronunciation tools etc.). All in all, it's been an education for us too! (Especially for me - at least Fongyee can break out into Mandarin when she needs to explain something in a different way...).

Thank again.

Edward

Many thanks for your supportive response, Dylan. Yes, I was intrigued by the '6-star' hotel/resort category too. The place I'm thinking of in Beijing is called The Opposite House (http://www.theoppositehouse.com). This hotel opened just after the Olympics in the new Sanlitun Village development near the Embassy District, in central eastern Beijing. Its '6-star' credentials come not just from the usual panoply of top restaurants - and, actually, a really good wine list that is suprisingly well-priced by Chinese standards - but from not having any check-in. You are met by someone who looks after you and knows when you are arriving etc. Architecturally the place is really fascinating as well: it's more like entering a museum of modern art than a typical hotel. In the case of The Opposite House this turns out to be a positive thing.

Thanks, Jeff. I'll have to pen Part 2 soon. So much is going on here that I'm not sure where to start in these posts. So I've lamely opted just to go back to the beginning and try to remember how the wine market has changed here over the last two years. As to that market, it's not yet huge, of course, but potentially sizeable. Domestic wines dominate by volume. Imported wines (in bottle, not bulk imports) lead the way in terms of value (not value to the consumer, alas, but high value worth per bottle for the importers!). I think finding genuinely good places to grow grapes for wine production in China is actually going to be pretty tough; and the climate is adverse in many places (with most rain coming at harvest time). But, who knows? There may be pockets where fine wine is possible.

Thanks, Dylan. My pleasure. In terms of education, our company, Dragon Phoenix, is the only WSET provider in Beijing that does not import wine. So we show our Chinese students wines from all over the world. But, critically, although we have to teach them the 'WSET way' of describing wine(s), we also incorporate Chinese terms/vocabulary into our power-points. In fact, we are hoping to work on a glossary of terms and we do keep records of our tasters first impressions, plus linking specific wines with certain Chinese products. We also do a lot of translation work, including wine portfolios with tasting notes (all of which have to be rendered in intelligble Chinese). But there is a lot of work to be done.