Dateline: Asia

Wines & Vines, July, 1998 by Kevin Sinclair

We met, appropriately, in the Bordeaux Room of the wine bar in the Furama Hotel. The lady came. We chatted about the intriguing history of this fascinating region. It soon turned out she knew little of wine and less of Cahors. It was her first week as a wine merchant. So how come she was touting this complex vintage from a respected chateau? Oh, she said, her employer owned a computer company, he came from close to Cahors so he decided to bring in the wine. There was no previous experience in storage, distribution or care of delicate vintages. There were no contacts in the trade. The fellow liked drinking Cahors, and felt others would do the same. So, hey, presto! - he's a wine merchant.

This is not uncommon in Asia. Last year, I chatted with the former Chilean trade commissioner. He opened a card file on his desk and idly flipped through business cards of dress designers, telecommunications engineers and stock brokers. All of them, 25 at least, had become part-time wine merchants in the previous month, most of them representing small individually-owned Chilean wineries.

And so it goes on. Throughout Asia, self-described wine merchants are springing up like mushrooms after the summer monsoon. They are everywhere, by the hundreds.

Pity the poor American winemaker seeking to break into the huge but tricky Asian market if he should, by mistake, fall into the amiably incompetent hands of one of these people.

The lesson here is simple: Take heed. If you want to sell in Asia, there are a few simple rules that can save you from heartbreak and bankruptcy. Take the advice of veteran food and beverage expert Gebby Scherrer. When he was Chef de Cuisine for Cathay Pacific Airways, he signed purchase orders for tens of thousands of cases of wine every year. I once accompanied him to Napa where we exhaustively tasted Heitz, Phelps and Mondavi vintages (among others) looking for a good Cabernet Sauvignon with "wings" - a wine that could put up with the rough treatment of air service. Scherrer is a professional. He knows the problems. He's aware of the pitfalls.

The ideal representative for a newcomer to the Asian market has to be a man or woman with experience in the wine trade, Scherrer warns. This is so obvious, one would think it did not need repeating. Yet you would be surprised how many serious producers allow their wines to be handled by someone totally new to the business. Would you let an untrained plumber pull a painful molar? No? Well, why entrust someone who has never sold a bottle of soda water with a container of prime wine worth $132,000?

Adrian Sank, whose firm Omtis represents in Hong Kong such high profile Californian producers as Trefethen, shakes his head in disbelief. You can't credit how some winemakers arrive at Kai Tak airport with a half-dozen sample bottles in their luggage and then sign contracts with people they have just met. He tells of one "wine merchant" who owned a fashion boutique and didn't drink licensed beverages.

Sank has simple tips: Make sure any wine rep loves good food and wine and is a member of social clubs where cuisine is a priority. Try to find a representative who is active in wine clubs and societies. Make sure, above all, the candidate has ample financial backing; you want to be paid, don't you?

Scherrer, Sank and respected New World vintages specialist Lillian Haynes give simple advice.

To make an impact on the Hong Kong market needs planning. The producer and importer have to spend lengthy hours in meetings deciding on where the wine will be placed, how much it will sell for, what sort of promotional tactics will be used (a tasting for professional sommeliers, introductory offers at special rates for clubs) and advertising.

But even before this preparatory stage is reached, the producer has to satisfy himself he is dealing with a properly-qualified wine merchant, and not some frock salesman who likes a delicate Chenin blanc.

"Does the person have face?" asks Gebby Scherrer. In Asia, this is the first and most vital question. Will the person who represents you and your wine have the necessary stature, personality and respect, which combine together to form the Chinese concept of "face." Will he or she reflect your wine with credit?

What about distribution, warehousing and cool storage? These are costly and complicated questions in marry Asian gateways. If you want your ulcers to churn, think about the friendly South African winemaker who entrusted three containers of wine to a neophyte airline pilot who left them sitting on the wharf during the Hong Kong summer. When eventually a few bottles reached consumers, the wine was tart and boiled. Not only did the producer not get paid, but his reputation took a savage thrashing from which it has never recovered in the Far East.

So, make sure your putative representative knows wines have to be transported swiftly from their refrigerated containers and stored in a cold room. Make sure he has trucks and staff who know that cases of wine are not thrown about like sacks of rice. Make sure he has a network of restaurants, clubs, hotels, retail shops and other outlets which will take your wine.