Though not something about which we have solid statistics, it seems likely that one of the biggest barriers to broader wine consumption in Hong Kong is the tricky question of how to store it.
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Category: Articles
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MIGHTY MILLENNIALS
Before any parents reading this start composing sternly-worded letters objecting to this article’s subject matter, this isn’t an article peddling wine to fifteen year-olds. “Millennial” is a poorly defined demographic, sometimes described as those born post-millennium, but according to our ultimate millennial resource, Google, it is “a person reaching young adulthood around the year 2000.”
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RED AND SPARKLY
Like a heavyweight champ donning a demure string of pearls, the concept of sparkling red wine strikes many as just a bit off. Pale pink and sparkly by all means, we seem to feel, but red and sparkly? Never!
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DON’T HIDE YOUR WHITE UNDER A BUSHEL
It’s a rare person in the wine world or any other who can make the statement Bruce Tyrrell makes about Hunter Valley Semillon, which he calls “our gift to the world.” While to some that may sound too close to “God’s gift to the world,” for Bruce it’s simply an honest statement of what it means to carry the torch for a classic wine style that’s deliciously unique, yet doesn’t quite resonate with consumers.
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A SHIRAZ WITH LESS BANG
Anybody who brings up weight in the post-holiday months probably deserves a sack of coal next Christmas. Our culture’s fixation with bodies is such that we tend to apply body-related analogies even to phenomena for which they’re rather poorly suited.
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BIG BLADDERS
In the minds of many wine connoisseurs, nothing is so shaded from this great elixir’s rarified glow than the idea of bulk wine. The very word “bulk” is deeply unsexy, more likely to bring to mind supersized packs of toilet paper than a treasured bottle you might share with your loved ones.
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COLLECTING DUST
In the popular imagination, the archetypal wine collector is a creature of Harris tweeds, leather club chairs and crystal decanters, laced together with a whiff of Cuban cigar. To the wine skeptic, wine collecting has its own whiff: one of elitism, decadence and, above all, great expense.
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THE IMPORTANCE OF SOMEWHERENESS
Anyone reading the paper lately can be left in no doubt that questions of who or what holds power are on everyone’s mind. In the realm of politics, it is hard for us to come to agreement, but the little world of wine tends to favor a more decentralized power. As wine consumers, we have come to prize above all things an essential “somewhereness” in wine (to dispense with the inescapably French term “terroir”), a term originally borrowed from politics.
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ALTERNATIVE OZ
Unlike the term “interesting” – usually a wine-speak euphemism for “faulty,” “bizarre,” or “borderline undrinkable” – the term “alternative” is fairly neutral. On iTunes, Alternative is a catchall, covering everyone from The Killers to your uncle Joe’s garage band. But something rarely considered “alternative” is Australia; to most drinkers, Australian wine is much more Kylie Minogue than Crowded House.
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PUNK IN PINK
In the sphere of tourism if not in the realm of wine, “Provence” is one of the world’s most evocative names, alternately redolent of wind-tickled fields of quivering lavender or sun-bleached beaches of quivering bikini-wearers depending on how you prefer to spend your holidays. For me the “image” that evokes modern Provence is, ironically, a song written by a 19th century Italian. “Di Provenza Il Mar, Il Suol” from Verdi’s La Traviata, the impassioned plea of a father for his son to return to his home country and leave his degenerate life in Paris with the decadent and beautiful but doomed courtesan Violetta Valery, seems a perfect metaphor for Provence’s internal conflict between the glossy cosmopolitan tourism that keeps its economy ticking and its deep-rooted sense of tradition and individualism.