Choosing wine in Hong Kong can be an overwhelming experience. Wine writer, Jamie Goode helps you choose and enjoy your wine with more confidence
Should I order the house wine?
Decent restaurants take a good deal of care in selecting their house wines, and these can be a good option. Restaurant wine is horribly expensive in Asia, with margins of four times wholesale price common. So by opting for the house wine, you can keep the cost of the meal down and still drink well. It’s not uncommon for restaurants to use a bit of psychology: they know that many consumers will be embarrassed to buy the cheapest wine, so they tend to have the highest margins on the most heavily frequented areas of the list, which are the three or four wines just below the house selection.
Should I ask the sommelier’s advice?
Restaurants employ sommeliers for two reasons: first, to enhance customers’ dining experiences by helping them choose the right wine to go with the food they’re eating, and second, to maximize profit by getting customers to spend more on wine, which is one of the key revenue streams for any establishment. Sommeliers can be snooty, patronizing and intimidating, but they can also be very helpful and a useful resource. Two tips. First, feel free to ask the sommelier for advice: if they are helpful and appropriate, you may find they help steer you towards new or unusual wines that you’d not have been confident in choosing yourself. If they are of the snooty type, or just seem intent on getting you to spend above your pain threshold, then you can politely over-ride them. Second, it’s helpful to be clear about your budget from the outset—try not to submit to the subtle psychological pressure to spend more just because you are making use of the sommelier’s expertise. You are the customer, and the customer is always right.
I’m having fish and she’s having red meat: which wine should I choose?
If you don’t want to order a bottle of wine each, then share a white wine or a Rosé: it won’t clash with the red meat in the way that red wine tends to clash with fish.
Ordering wine by the glass can be a good idea, particularly if the restaurant has a decent selection available. This makes it possible to select wines to match with each course. But there are a couple of issues to bear in mind here. First, if the restaurant has a lot of wines by the glass, check whether they have a special preservation system such as Cruvinet, which keeps the open bottles in good condition. If not, then ask the sommelier when the bottle was opened: anything more than a day earlier, and the wine will likely not be in such good condition.
Which wines match best with Asian food?
It can be tricky to find the perfect match for Asian meals, because often, each of the dishes will have a different flavour profile but all dishes are shared by the dining group. Generally, it’s best to stick with white wines, which will not clash with any of the flavours. The most effective approach to spicy food is to use a bit of sweetness, or bubbles to contrast with the chilli. Alsace whites such as Riesling (but not the driest ones; opt for off-dry styles), Gewurztraminer or Pinot Gris tend to work well, as do New Zealand Rieslings and Pinot Gris. Sparkling wines and Champagnes would also be a good match as they help diffuse the chilli and cool the mouth.
What do you do when the wine arrives?
The first thing the sommelier will do is show you the bottle: this is so you can check that it’s the right wine and the right vintage. Sometimes restaurants will list a good vintage, but then have a less good one in stock, so it’s worth double checking. Then the bottle will be uncorked, and a small measure poured. This is so the condition of the wine can be assessed. The majority of wines are still sealed with natural cork, and a small proportion of bottles are tainted by a chemical known as TCA, produced by fungi living in the small holes that naturally occur in the cork bark.
TCA imparts a musty odour that is variously described as the smell of damp cardboard or old cellars, and it affects around 2–5 percent of all wines sealed with cork. Sometimes it’s a strong taint; more commonly, it is a background mustiness. If you notice this (and once you’ve recognized the smell once, you will find it much easier to spot on subsequent occasions), then politely decline the bottle. A good sommelier will accept this with no fuss, and will usually confirm your diagnosis, providing a replacement bottle free of charge.
The other fault sometimes encountered is that of oxidation, which can be caused by a poor cork, or by bad storage conditions—excessive heat cooks wine. So if the wine tastes tired, lacks freshness, and in the case of a white wine is an excessively dark yellow colour, or in the case of a red is a faded red/brown colour, then don’t accept it.
It’s worth emphasizing here that the tasting sample poured by the sommelier is not so that you can decide whether or not you like the wine. It’s unacceptable to send a non-faulty wine back just because you don’t like it. The important thing is to communicate well with the sommelier: if she or he has recommended a wine to you, and when it comes you really don’t like it, then this could be a case where at the sommelier’s discretion the wine could be taken back and another one provided. It’s a bit of a grey area, but if you are reasonable and polite, it’s likely that the sommelier will be reasonable and accommodating in response.
Pouring etiquette
Once the wine has been poured, the important thing to remember is that this is your wine, so it is really up to you whether you’d like the wine poured for you, or whether you’d like the bottle left on your table for you and your guests to pour themselves. If you do pour yourselves, there is no set etiquette as to who should do the pouring, although most people would consider it polite if you offered the wine to others first before topping up your own glass. Unfortunately, some restaurants seem to rigidly take the bottle and deliberately place it out of reach so that only the staff can pour. If the staff do the pouring, watch that they don’t overfill your glasses (about one-third full is ideal), and that they don’t top people’s glasses up excessively in order to encourage you to buy more wine. Once again, communication is the key. It’s OK to politely instruct the staff about how you would like your wine served.
