DEBRA Meiburg, the first Master of Wine (MW) in Asia, compares herself to a glass of Pinot Noir, "flirty, fruity and lively but with a solid core of serious intent."

Meiburg, an American whose family had a small hobby vineyard in Sonoma County, moved to Hong Kong 25 years ago and is now a permanent resident and noted wine educator and writer.

She says her great pleasure is educating Chinese people about wine.

"Many times I have wished I were Chinese," says Meiburg, when asked if being a Westerner makes it difficult for Chinese to relate to her message. She does speak Cantonese like a local, however, her Mandarin is admittedly not very good.

One of only four Masters of Wine in Asia and one of only two female MWs in Asia, she earned her degree in 2008.

Before that, she had been involved in wine industry for 15 years: She worked a harvest in Chile, pruned vines in Bordeaux, ran a grape crusher and de-stemmer in South Africa, and worked as a cellar hand in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

Today Meiburg is one of the most popular and influential wine educators in China, especially in Shanghai, where her wine-teaching video titled "Grape Moments" is aired on screens in thousands of taxis.

"I am teaching all the taxi drivers," Meiburg says with a laugh.

She also conducts wine training and appreciation courses for companies across Asia, for example, financial services companies that need to wine and dine clients.

Her video teaching series "Meet the Winemaker," will be aired soon on youku.com.

Meiburg attributes her success to her female identity.

"The industry is traditionally dominated by men. As a female, no one is afraid of me. They don't worry about their pride and are willing to ask me questions. Men especially are sometimes intimidated in front of other men," the wine master explains.

She likes to call herself a wine "edu-tainer."

"Wine education is entertaining. Learning should be fun," Meiburg said last month at a wine seminar in Shanghai hosted by Lucaris, an Asian crystal brand.

Her teaching style is lively and interactive, and outside of Hong Kong there's much less emphasis on language, since she's not fluent in Mandarin.

When she teaches the grape variety Riesling, a big, tall, muscular man in a ballerina's tutu steps to the platform. The reason: "Because Riesling is delicate and very beautiful but strong in the middle," Meiburg explains.

When teaching Sauvignon Blanc, she produces a person wearing a grassy hula skirt to emphasize the grassy, vegetal aroma of the wine.

When she describes Chateau Margaux, a Bordeaux wine estate, a woman in the audience dons a queen's crown and red velvet cloak, expressing the wine's femininity, elegance and status.

"This approach makes it easy for students to remember vividly," says Meiburg.

Lynne Sherriff, former chairman of the Institute of Masters of Wine, considers Meiburg's comparison of wine with people and her visual approach very useful in wine education. "If you hear and see at the same time, that sends much stronger information to the brain," says Sheriff.

When explaining wine regions, Meiburg talks about four stray cats she adopted, including one named Musigny, a commune in the Cote-d'Or department, eastern France, and another called Beaujolais, an AOC in southern Burgundy.

Earning the title Master of Wine was the most serious challenge she had faced. It's notoriously difficult.

Rigorous exam

Starting in 2002, she spent six years passing various examinations on the way to her Master of Wine degree.

Each year, only two or three people pass the international exam, which includes sections on theory and tasting as well as a dissertation.

The theory part wasn't too hard for her. It covered knowledge about owning a winery, running a vineyard and making wine.

The most difficult part was the four-day tasting. Twelve glasses of wine, red and white, are tasted each day. Candidates have 10 minutes per glass, to taste and write one and a half pages about where the wine is from, the grape variety, how it is made, aged and marketed.

"Actually, you only have 30 seconds to identify, one minute to be sure, and rest of the time to write, otherwise you cannot finish," Meiburg recalls.

Her dissertation was on wine education and training in China.

Shanghai on the rise

Meiburg has launched a series of books and articles, mainly insider reports with in-depth analysis of the Chinese wine market. "After becoming a Master of Wine, I am always thinking of how to make a proper business model for all the things I want to do from my heart," Meiburg says.

Her latest book, "Guide to the Shanghai Wine Trade," will be released in November. It is based on interviews with 20 sommeliers and visits to 40 wine stores.

"Come on Hong Kong, Shanghai is getting ahead of you," she says.

Early on, people in both Shanghai and Beijing didn't know about anything except Bordeaux, but times have changed.

Three months ago, she found a store in Shanghai featuring exclusively South African wines; she hasn't seen such a store in Hong Kong.

Compared with Beijing, Shanghai is more experimental and open-minded, so people drink more diverse wines, she observes.

"The space in Hong Kong is also expensive, which forces its wine market to be more conservative," she adds.

The retail market in Shanghai is more robust than in Hong Kong and home consumption is much higher.

"It's probably due to different life habits. Young, wealthy Shanghai people are accustomed to dining at home, while Hong Kong people prefer to dine out," the master says.

Her observations are supported by Jerry Liao, managing sommelier at Jing'an Shangri-La, West Shanghai.

"Shanghai's wine market has been mature due to good market segmentation. Some wine traders are devoted exclusively to selling wines from a very small region," Liao says.

Difficult wine pairing

Wine pairing is one of the most important ways to spread wine knowledge and culture in China, Meiburg says. "When serving food with wine, the two together create a new flavor, a third experience," she says.

But the dining habits and taste of Chinese people are totally different from those of Westerners, making wine pairing more difficult.

For example, seafood is served first in the West, so that the accompanying, light, chilled white wine is served before heavier red.

However, in a typical Chinese banquet, fish is usually a hot dish served in the middle or at the end of the meal.

"It's an unfamiliar sensation for the Chinese palate to have a very cold drink with a hot, fresh fish," says Meiburg.

Furthermore, Westerners typically smell the wine, drink a bit and then have a bite of food, while Chinese usually eat first and drink wine later to wash it down, Meiburg observes. This may come from the Chinese tea-drinking tradition.

Clearly, it's impossible to transplant Western concepts in China.

One bottle on the table, one beautiful dish, one special moment - that's Meiburg's approach for Chinese dining, which she calls the relatively best solution so far.

"Pick one important dish and that's when the wine comes. The rest of the time you can drink tea, water and anything you like. For example, when the abalone arrives, you open your beautiful Burgundy," Meiburg explains.

Q: What's your wine philosophy?
A: Wine is about history, culture, geography, science and, above all, pleasure. Try every wine region once. If it's bad, wait 10 years and try it again.

Q: How does wine touch your heart?
A: It starts in the glass. All that wonderful aroma and texture is impossible not to fall in love with, but you really fall in love when you learn all about where it came from and who the people behind it are.

Q: What's the biggest frustration in your wine life?
A: Mainly it's to do with time, especially in a new market like ours. There are so many incredible opportunities to pursue but nobody to tell you how to manage all of them.

Q: What's your impressive wine memory?
A: A wine tasting, during which well-aged Grand Cru Burgundy represents everyone's birth year, from 1955 to 1990.