Taste of exotic for down-in-one culture
Print Edition
OUR perspective of table wine varies. The wine you drink at a meal can be costly or affordable, depending on the occasion and who you’re dining with.
I remember many years ago, when I worked for a gentleman’s club in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London, a guest asked for a “good wine” at a reasonable price.
My head sommelier suggested a very good quality wine from Lebanon (Chateau Musar 1991), but the guest was unhappy and said: “I need a decent wine for my friends.”
He took the wine list and ordered Chateau Leoville Barton 1994 instead and said: “This is a decent wine, because it’s been Bordeaux Grand Cru Classe since 1855.”
The two wines were quite similarly priced, but had different implied meaning for this guest.
Similarly, several years ago in China, many consumers looked at wine as a luxury item which could lift their image. So they only drank expensive and famous brands — such as Chateau Lafite from France, or Grange from Australia — though they might not like the taste and mixed the wine with Sprite.
At the apex of this kind of high-end wine offering is a DRC (Domaine de la Romanee Conti) dinner charging at least 10,000 yuan per person (US$1,600), with maximum of 10 bookings.
Riedel black tie glasses in different shapes complement different wines. Every bottle is served at just the right temperature and paired with exquisite French dishes — different wines for different courses.
Diners follow a step-by-step ritual: observe the color of the wine for a few seconds; swirl the contents of the glass; sniff the bouquet several times; before finally sipping the wine.
And it doesn’t stop there. Next, keep the wine in your mouth for a short while to savor the taste of the most expensive wines of the world; after finally swallowing the wine, the aftertaste should linger for a few minutes.
Now some of these consumers know nothing about wine — they’re high-end consumers and enjoy it simply for the luxury.
But now in Shanghai, more and more high-end consumers have developed at least some knowledge of wine, while some have in-depth knowledge of certain wine regions — they could even sketch a detailed map of Grand Crus of certain Burgundy villages.
For these wine connoisseurs, wine is the elixir. “Life is too short to drink bad wine” is their motto.
On the other hand, when I studied wine courses in London, I noticed that studies found that 70% of the wine bought in Britain was sold through supermarkets, and these wines were below 10 UK pounds — around 100 yuan — the cost of a table wine for most occasions.
And in wine-producing countries such as France and Italy, you can see people serving wine from the carafe. Sometimes people bring their own container to the winery and buy wine in bulk.
Back to China, the most popular price band for online wine selling is 50-70 yuan, according to a e-commerce website. For these consumers, price rather than prestige is their concern. They don’t know much about wine appreciation but want to try something chic, with a reasonable price tag.
This is not for the everyday, but special occasions such as the Spring Festival, weddings, or family gatherings.
And how do they drink it? In a basic wine glass, a bowl, or even a paper cup, regardless of the temperature of the wine. And they don’t care much about the color, aroma or taste either.
“Gan Bei” — literally dry cup — is a typical Chinese toast and tradition in drinking alcohol in China, urging the drinker to down in one. This tradition is easily transferred to wine drinking.
All kinds of food are served with wine by these consumers, or they know the basic pairing: red wine with red meat, white wine with white meat.
While appreciation of the taste is not their main motivation for choosing wine, various other reasons have been put forward. These range from fashion, health and beauty, through to absurd rumors such as that wine offsets the effects of pollution or enriches the blood.
In fact, an editor tried to persuade me to write an article along the lines that “wine can resist nuclear radiation,” in the wake of the 2013 Fukushima Daiichi reactor disaster in Japan.
However, whatever the reason for choosing, some of the cheap wines available are unlikely to do much to improve your health. Some are industrial fake stuff, or are stored in bad conditions, have oxidized or are otherwise past their best.
But wine culture in China is just beginning. In general, wine is still regarded as a symbol of a Western lifestyle, and the price is still more expensive than the more popular alcoholic drink — Chinese baijiu spirit distilled from sorghum.
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