(HONG KONG, JAN. 14, 2011) I was in a restaurant here last night called Gold. It is the new trendy restaurant in Central from Harlan Goldstein. It’s packed all the time. I was looking at the list of about 200 or so wines, and I noticed that the most expensive wine on the list was a jerobaum (4.5 liters) of 1945 Chateau Mouton-Rothschild for $2.48 million HK, or about $320,000.
Needless to say, I didn’t order it with my good quality steaks.
The list is, of course, correct in stating that apparently only 24 bottles
of such wine exist in the world. However, it seems pretty surreal. The owner of the resto thought that he had a buyer for the rare bottle of 1945 Mouton tonight. I wonder if he sold it? Better, I wonder how the big bottle tasted?
Hong Kong really is a rarified wine center. If people read the headlines around the world – particularly wine producers – they may get the false impression that wine consumers only pay outlandish prices for the likes of first growth Bordeaux and tiny production grand cru Burgundy. I can’t tell you how many times I hear wine producers say that they view Hong Kong and Asia as their “untapped market.” They believe that Asians will line up to pay many times over retail for their wines.
They are so wrong. The crazy, overinflated market has nothing to do with most of their wines. That is not the real Hong Kong market.
There is a whole other market, of course. There are thousands of people who are interested in drinking excellent wine with great food in the hundreds of excellent restaurants in the city. They are the same people who are attending my one-hour Watson’s seminar on Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons on Tuesday. They are the ones I will see reading my columns in Hong Kong Tatler or visiting this site.
These wine consumers in Hong Kong are real. And they are multiplying. And they are not part of the sensational headlines.
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