Three Days, Two Nights, Five Hundred Videos

Whenever the alarm clock goes off at 5am you know it’s going to be a tough day! That, and waking up with the knowledge that you’re heading to Shenzhen, China to taste over 100 wines and video the tasting notes for each and every one, makes actually getting out of bed a struggle in itself.

So what were we doing? Wine Times and others from Hong Kong were invited to come and review the wines for China based wine website www.hesha.com as they will soon be launching an interactive wine site that recommends wine for the China market through short videos telling people about each wine and recommending how, where and when would be the best time to drink these wines.

Standing on the platform of Hung Hom MTR station waiting for the train with Eugene Chan and Marcos Lui of Zeitgeist Loft, we knew it was going to be a long and punishing trip, but upon meeting Handon Hu of hesha.com at the station in Shenzhen, we also realized it was also going to be a lot of fun.

Hesha.com had arranged for 120 wines to be tasted and filmed with the wines encompassing all genres from dry to sweet, red to white, still to sparkling and from regions all over the world, but predominantly wines that are best suited to, or currently doing well on the China wine market today.

Contrary to what one might of thought (with it being the China market), it was not a French wine fest, quite the opposite, as the majority of non-Chinese wines consumed in China are actually the super fruity, jammy fruit bombs associated with the lower end in terms of quality from areas such as Australia, America and Chile. There would be, of course, a bunch of French, but fortunately Handon had arranged for some decent drops of French to be tasted.

The days there started with a whole bunch of sparkling and white wines, the majority below 150RMB and slowly progressed into the reds in the afternoon. We tasted champagnes, sparkling wines from the Loire, Prosecco’s and other random sparklings from the very good, to the mildly offensive to the wines that sit at the bottom rung of the ladder in terms of quality (in my view).

There were the generic American’s such as Eagle Creek (more like Gallo in style) to Penfold’s, Wolf Blass and Yellow Tail from Australia to Montes wines from Chile and, conversely, a range of great wines from France (and a whole bunch of bad wines from there too!). We were fortunate enough to mix into the tasting some Chateau Leoville Poyferre 2007, Haut Bages Liberal 2009, Grand Puy Lacoste 2007 and Lascombes 2008 – which was great and took away the monotony of tasting the Great Walls, Dynasty’s and Jacob’s Creek’s.

It was an interesting experiment for us (and a lot of hard work for the guys at hesha.com!) as it gave us a clear picture of the quality of wines that people on the mainland drink as everyday wines. They’re probably no different from what the average man or woman around the world drinks every day, but with us being so spoilt in Hong Kong they’re not the kind of wines one would normally be found drinking here.

Super fruity Yellow Tail was tasted and for many of the tasters, myself included, and it was the first time we had tried these wines! I was a little apprehensive going to taste the range of Yellow Tail wines as they don’t exactly come with super exciting endorsements and I have got to say that the quality of the wines lives up to their reputation. With the exception of the Yellow Tail Reserve Cabernet, the wines, for me, were just way too sweet and jammy, actually really like a soft drink and living up to my expectation of it being the ‘coca-cola’ of wine. I think I remember my tasting note for the Yellow Tail Reserve Shiraz suggesting that, as the wine was so bad, it would be an ideal gift for one’s mother-in-law!

There was also a fair share of average quality French wines with most hailing from Bordeaux as this is still the dominant region for the French wine market in China. I remember demonstrating with one bottle of Bordeaux how to appropriately mix coca cola into the wine to make it taste better – in fact, it didn’t make it taste better, but I think (if the video passes the censors) that people will get my point! The better French wines were at the higher price point and, as aforementioned, there were some decent ones to boot.

Wines we tasted came from Argentina, Chile, China, America, Australia, France, Italy, Germany –oh…I forgot, we also tasted a bunch of Blue Nun wines, the non-alcoholic versions; and I really suggest you avoid these – Spain, Portugal, South Africa and Canada (ice wines). There were some wines that I really enjoyed and that I thought would do well on the China market (only time will tell) such as the German Rieslings, the higher end French wines, the Montes Chardonnay and Malbec that were pleasing, the Australians that are already doing well and the wines from China.

From China we tasted Grace Vineyards Symphony white wine (excellent), Great Wall Cabernet Sauvignon 1995 (surprisingly very good), Great Wall Cabernet Sauvignon 1997 (not so great), Changyu (foul) and Dynasty Cabernet Sauvignon (actually really drinkable). It was a breath of fresh air for me to see the Chinese wines standing up and doing well against their international counterparts and I hope the quality will continue improving.

In all it was an interesting and eye opening experience to see what wines are working well on the mainland and I hope we did the wines justice by being (mostly) objective and finding a demographic to fit the wines into. Consumption of wines in China is continuing to rise and I hope we did our part in recommending some good wines for both the novice and experienced drinker in China. For now, the market is swaying towards the overly sweet and fruity wines (I remember one “wine” called Lychee De Luxe – an eclectic blend of dry sparkling wine and lychee syrup – that brought a few chuckles from the tasters). This is giving Aussie wines the upper hand there but I figure, like any other juvenile market, that they will eventually get sick of these flavours and begin to learn that wines with a bit of intrigue and complexity bring about a wholly different wine drinking experience.

Our experience was a great one but it was tiring as well as a lot of fun. Tasting at 9:30am is never easy, and after 12 hours one is suitably shattered but at the end of the day, it was great to be a part of the expanding wine business in China and we at Wine Times wish all the guys at hesha.com all the very best with the new website and, maybe somewhat surprisingly, we are looking forward to the next time we can get up there and taste more wine with them.