Bordeaux Confidential wows crowds at Hong Kong and Beijing tastings

When is a wine tasting event not a wine tasting event? When you have epic tunes from an international superstar DJ, hundreds of wines, the world’s foremost wine critic in attendance and more than 120 chateaux represented, all inside two of the world’s most deluxe hotels.

The 2019 Bordeaux Confidential Grand Tasting events – 1,400 people attended the events in The Rosewood Beijing and Four Seasons Hong Kong, making them the most popular in the event’s history – were more like wine festivals, something anyone who has been to a JamesSuckling.com wine tasting event knows to expect by now.

And the Bordeaux vintages on offer made this year’s events even more exciting.

WATCH: Hear what producers had to say during the event: Click Here

The 2016 Bordeaux vintage is already recognized as being one of the best of the last decade. The 2018 is similarly celebrated as an exceptional vintage, with many producers claiming: “It’s probably our best ever.”

Those vintages were flown in to Beijing and Hong Kong, the 2018 en primeur wines drawn from barrels just a week before the event and jet-freighted overnight, giving the 1,400+ attendees the chance to taste the wines and speak to producers and winemakers in the flesh.

“Hong Kong is the only event of its kind for Bordeaux barrel samples outside of France,” said James Suckling, CEO and editor at JamesSuckling.com. “It is only because we have no taxes or import duties on wines that we can do it.

“The 2018 are young wines with beautiful fruit and ripe tannins. Great vintages are great from the beginning. They are beautiful, fruity and structured from the very beginning, like the 2018.”

And of the 2016, he said: “The freshness and structure of the wines produced in 2016 as well as their purity and transparency is impressive. The wines have a classicism that reminds me of the great wines of the 1980s, but they have much more precision and clarity due to advances in viticulture and winemaking since then.”

James and his team of tasters, including contributing editor Jack Suckling and senior editor Nick Stock, have tasted nearly 2,500 wines from the 2016 and 2018 vintages this year, and met with dozens of producers, chateaux owners and negociants.

The events also showed off the work of Holland America, Sea Shepherd, Coravin and Eco Drive, organizations supported by JamesSuckling.com.

The series will be back again next year, bringing even more of Bordeaux’s top wines to Asia.

Scroll through the galleries below to get a taste of the events, and read more about the 2018 and 2016 vintages in our Tasting Reports:

BORDEAUX 2018: AN EXCEPTIONAL VINTAGE

2016 BORDEAUX: A VINTAGE FOR TODAY’S BORDEAUX WINE LOVERS