Wine Future Hong Kong '11
Monday, 3 October, 2011
Neil Pendock
Neil Pendock reflects on the upcoming World Wine Summit in Asia.
The Chinese have a saying “a foreign moon is always rounder.” Which explains why the Financial Times ad for the upcoming World Wine Summit in Asia, to be held in the second week of November in Hong Kong, features photos of a dozen round eyes. No space for Simon Tam or Asia’s first MW Jeannnie Cho Lee, although neither are related to Quasimodo and both appear in the fine print.
So far, so colonial. In pride of place, Robert Parker. So the contention of Nedeburg Auction guest speaker, wine blogger extraordinaire David White, that it’s twilight time for the gatekeepers of wine, is not universally accepted. At least not by the Wine Academy of Spain, who host the event, which is modestly billed as “the most important summit and conference of the industry.” The ad must have been written by Decanter’s (“quite simply - the world’s best wine magazine”) mad men, although self praise is also no recommendation in the Middle Kingdom.
Second in self-importance is “guest of honour” Francis Ford Coppola who these days finds wine an easier row to till than making Hollywood blockbusters. Thank heavens Sting has yet to exchange his guitar for a cow’s horn, although he is now a producer of biodynamic Sangiovese on his Tuscan estate Il Palagio.
Also AWOL is French actor and fellow producer Gerard Depardieu (who claims to drink five to six bottles a day “when stressed”). Gerard gave wine unwished for coverage when, unable to contain himself, he urinated on the floor of an Air France flight from Paris to Dublin after being denied access to the toilet during takeoff in June. He was travelling to the Emerald Isle to resume shooting of Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia, in which he plays the part of Obelix. He was obviously acting in character.
Britannia may have withdrawn from Hong Kong when wine lover Chris Patten hauled down the Union Flag for the last time in 1997, but Steven Spurrier and Jancis Robinson make the list and at a rumoured $20K a pop, who can blame them. The list is dominated by Americans. In addition to his Bobness, hello James Suckling, Randall Grahm, Adam Strum from Wine Enthusiast and Gazza Vaynerchuk. Why would an SA producer fly halfway round the world to listen to a bunch of US eminences when the USA doesn’t feature in his order book, anyway?
The only South African mentioned in the fine print is WOSA CEO Su Birch. A weak team indeed from SA if the summit lives up to its pre-publicity, although I expect the really important people in SA wine, producers like Hein Koegelenberg, who recently sold 2.9 million bottles of L’Huguenot to the Sleeping Dragon, to attend in their private capacities.
Judging by the attendees, the summit sounds a bit like the 1790 travelogue of Xavier de Maistre entitled A Journey Round my Bedroom. Or even better, the G9 summit of gastronomy which was also organized by Spain, by the International Advisory Council of the Basque Culinary Center, in this case. Held last month in Lima, Peru, it was attended by some of the tallest toques in the business: René Redzepi and Ferran Adrià amongst them.
Their summit was described by Guardian food writer Jay Rayner as “bigging up their contribution to saving humanity from itself is an act of such self-importance, such ludicrous self-regard you'd need an oxygen tank to help you get your breath back. Read this stuff with a bottle of Gaviscon by your side, because trust me, it's a very quick route to acute indigestion.”
Controversialists in the ranks of wine hacks will be hoping the pooh-bahs of Hong Kong follow the lead of the chefs and issue a communiqué along the lines of the sermon from Peru: "we dream of a future in which the [winemaker] is socially engaged, conscious of and responsible for his or her contribution to a just a sustainable society ... through our [wine making], our ethics and our aesthetics, we can contribute to the culture and identity of a people, a region, a country ... we can also serve as an important bridge to other cultures ... we all have a responsibility to know and protect nature."