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  • Enjoying food & wine in Hainan island
  • By Jeannie Cho Lee MW
  • on 21 Oct 2011 in Travel
  • My hosts at Haikou in Hainan island, knowing how much I enjoy local food, were eager to take me to a typical Hainanese restaurant. The parking lot of the restaurant was like a giant hypermarket replete with a huge set of buildings. We entered an area that looked like something in between a large Malaysian hawker stall centre and a giant wet market. I was told it was a very popular restaurant with the locals called Qiong Cai Wang. read more
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  • Wine's spirituality
  • By Jeannie Cho Lee MW
  • on 25 Feb 2011 in Travel
  • We drive along Highway 1, the scenery changing from a bustling cosmopolitan city to a scene from a medieval painting. We are driving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Eli Ben-Zaken, owner of Domaine du Castel, is speaking in his soft, slightly hoarse voice, “I used to think the art of survival was one stage of existence while the art of living was the next stage. read more
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  • For the love of Pinot
  • By Jeannie Cho Lee MW
  • on 11 Feb 2011 in Travel
  • I was recently invited as a special guest of the Central Otago Pinot Noir Celebration from 27-29 January 2011 and was asked to give a speech during the gala dinner about my thoughts on the event and Pinot Noir. There was much to say about this biannual celebration which puts Pinot Noir on a pedestal and analyses it from as many perspectives as three days will allow. We had verticals of Pinot Noir from some of the oldest wineries in Central Otago – Mt Difficulty, Felton Road and Quartz Reef. read more
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  • The Best of Chile
  • By Jeannie Cho Lee MW
  • on 21 Jan 2011 in Travel
  • All around me, as far as the eye could see, there was sand -- sand dunes as well as sand piles in intriguing shapes forming gigantic sand sculptures embodying nature’s random yet orderly chaos. This is the Valley of the Moon, in Northern Chile, whose name derives from its similarity to the surface of the moon. I stood in the midst of the sand sculptures looking up at the excruciatingly bright blue sky with the wind of the Pacific blowing across my face and felt like a small figure in a Dali painting. The colours were so sharp that even with my sunglasses on, I had to squint. read more
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