The Pinot Noir Challenge – Germany Vs The World

As I sit and write this piece there is a challenge taking place in Felix, one of the world’s top restaurants located on the top floor of the internationally renowned Peninsula Hong Kong hotel with some of Asia’s best palates blindly comparing German Pinot Noir’s against some of the very best in the world from France, Australia, Argentina, America and New Zealand.

I snuck in to the event (actually, I was invited) to check out the proceedings and have a chat with some of the judges who included internationally acclaimed first Asian Master of Wine Jeannie Cho Lee among others such as Nelson Chau (Chairman of the Hong Kong Sommelier Association), Lau Chi Sun (Chief Editor of Wine Now Magazine), Tan Ying Hsien (Journalist and Educator from Singapore), Katsuyuki Tanaka (Chief writer of Wi-Not Wine Magazine from Japan) and Chris So (Master of Wine student and educator in Hong Kong).

The idea is to show off the qualities of German Pinot Noir and potentially show how some of the world’s best Pinot comes from Germany – a country that is more renown for its white wines than its red wines.

Local wine educator and founder of the Hong Kong Wine Judges Association, Mr. Peter Kwong is currently MC and in charge of the proceedings, leading the tasters through the array of wines and introducing Manuela Liebchen, Project director of Deutsches Weininstitut, who is in town from Germany for a mere 12 hours to oversee the event.

Speaking to Wine Times, Ms. Liebchen said. “Thirty six per cent of wines made in Germany are red and we believe some of the world’s best Pinot Noir (spatburgunder) comes from Germany. We are very excited to be doing this challenge in Hong Kong after the success of the London 2011 challenge”.

In November 2011, the Deutsches Weininstitut (German Wine Institute) hosted the first “Pinot Noir Challenge” in London. In the Top10 of the 40 contestants, there were 7 Pinot Noirs from Germany. This unexpected result caused many wine lovers to re-estimate this traditional white wine producing country.

Speaking to Nelson Siu, editor in Chief of Hong Kong’s WineLuxe Magazine and media sponsor of the event he told me that they are “very excited about the potential of German Pinot Noir in Hong Kong as Asian people, especially here in Hong Kong, are already used to drinking Pinot Noir as they have been drinking wines from Burgundy for a long time here”.

“With Global warming, the wines have become much richer over the last few decades and we think that they are able to stand up to some of the best in the world”, added Mr. Siu.

Winemakers in Germany have apparently in recent times been slaving at producing rather than promoting, and so The Deutsches Weininstitut has chosen 20 varieties of premium Pinot Noir from Germany. Wine importers in Hong Kong are also invited to take part in the contest with their Pinot Noir from around the world (the German Pinot Noir’s in this challenge are not durrently available in the territory). Forty wines will compete in a blind tasting for the championship trophy thus making it a fair and square contest. 

To make the contest impartial, judges are scoring according to the Hong Kong Wine Judges Association’s system, an epic blind-tasting that will pit Pinot Noir’s from across the world and culminate in a final debate and ranking.

As this is happening right now we will bring you the results of the challenge accordingly. German wines have seen a renaissance in Hong Kong recently and we think this event will only highlight further the quality of wines that are produced there. All I can say is that “may the best wine win – and it had better be German”!