Dateline: Asia

Wines & Vines, March, 2003 by Kevin Sinclair

In Steamers Bar and Restaurant in the trendy Hong Kong coastal suburb of Saikung, waitress Beth de la Cruz pours a glass of Australian Chardonnay. Her customer takes a sip, pulls a face and sends it back.

"Another corked bottle," says de la Cruz, as she hands the wine to bar manager Deane Trainor. It's yet another reason why the management at Steamers Bar is looking for screwtop wines, particularly for whites. In the sauna-like humidity of the Hong Kong summer, wines are likely to go off quickly unless they have been stored in properly chilled cellars and carried across oceans in refrigerated containers.

"It's just too dangerous," says Steamers' chief manager, Les Curl. "It's expensive, it's frustrating, it's a waste of time and money and, above all, it upsets our clients.

"We always replace corked wine and we get compensated from the distributors if we return the bottle, but if you keep serving bad wine, people are going to drink somewhere else."

Curl estimates that in one recent consignment of otherwise tasty Australian white, fully a third of the bottles were corked. He's now switched labels. But as far as he is concerned, the solution is to go screwtop.

Many others in Asia think the same. While there seem to be far fewer complaints about good quality American, French, Italian or Australian reds, the percentage of delicate whites that is returned as corked seems extraordinarily high in Hong Kong and places with similar climates.

Clive McLaughlin, general manager of Watsons, Hong Kong's largest importer and retailer, takes enormous care with wine from the sellers in New Zealand, Argentina, Oregon, Spain or a dozen other regions until it is sold in one of his outlets. He monitors every step of every shipment, from the winery to consignor to shipping line to delivery at the Hong Kong container port to his cooled warehouses.

"In this climate, you can't take a chance," he says.

That's a feeling reinforced by figures such as Michel Laroche of the famed family winery in Chablis, who is putting screwtops on a third of his grand cru. (For more information, see page 18 of the Dec., 2002 W&V.)

If Hong Kong restaurant owners are concerned, many Asian wine importers are frankly very worried. As millions of upwardly mobile middle-class wine drinkers emerge, retailers fear that their first sip of wine may be from a bottle that is loathsomely corked.

"It's no joke," says Annette Pock-lington, owner of Hong Kong's long-established Kedington Wines. She deals with areas like the Claire and Barossa in Australia and New Zealand, where screwtops, especially for white wines, are becoming common, particularly on the less expensive whites.

Why? "Simple," she says. "It cuts cork danger.

Ironically, while newcomers to wine have little resistance because they do not carry cultural baggage, and while the ultra-sophisticated accept screwtops because they realize the danger of corking, it's the vast midlayets of wine drinkers who are most suspicious of change.

This is the task of wine importers, retailers, distributors, sommeliers and wine waiters--to educate the customer.

Watson Wine commercial manager Paul Liversedge says South Australia and Victoria (with their Rieslings) and New Zealand (Sauvignon blanc) are leading the way. But some reds are also now in screwtops. And the trend is going up-market, he notes, with more expensive reds now using the modern equipment.

"Of course, screwrops give cleaner wines," he adds. He agrees with many others in the trade that there has been surprisingly little customer resistance. Indeed, among bar managers and professionals selling wine, the move to screwtops has been met with enthusiasm. It's some knowledgeable end users who may have doubts.

Ross Chan, the young Canadian veteran who runs Vinoasis, an importing and distribution company which brings wine to new users in China and Hong Kong, says top New World labels are turning to the screw rather than the cork.

Chan grins when he talks of new techniques to open bottles in restaurants. "It's going to be hilarious." That's because of customer resistance.

"Is there resistance? Hell, yeah! Especially those European (mainly the Brits) historians and old timers. Boy, do they find screwcaps and synthetic corks offensive."

The old British firm of Berry Brothers and Rudd has operated for years in Hong Kong. Its wine manager Nick Pegna points out that in the Australian region of Claire, the Southern Hemisphere's top district for Riesling, all producers decided to take a common approach. Everyone opted for screwtops. This was done so those who used the new methods could not face prejudice from old-fashioned drinkers. The 50 producers all felt strongly that their product would be better with screw than cork. So they vowed to act in unison.

There's almost as much sweeping agreement among New Zealand makers of Sauvignon blanc. "Many ask me what type of closures I would prefer," Pegna notes. He's aware that screwcaps save producers money.

"The cost of cork failure is relatively higher for cheap, high volume wines," he says. "Expensive wines generally do not work (with screwcaps) as they need to evolve for longer in the bottle, and the cachet issue is important. I am surprised to hear Maison Laroche will be doing it. They will be breaking new ground."