Blog Image: 

 Asia is a continent of self-professed foodies. If you look at the eating habits of local Singaporeans, Koreans, Japanese, Shanghainese, Taiwanese, Thai or Hong Kong Chinese, we have one thing in common: we eat all day. Xiao chi (snacks) found on nearly every street corner in the busy culinary capitals of Asia are our soul food. The steamed dumplings in the bamboo steamers, the white buns stuffed with sweet red beans or savoury pork or chicken, and the fish cakes on skewers which vary little whether they are enjoyed in Seoul, Tokyo or Hong Kong.

Blog Image: 

 When I first met Lu Siqing, the celebrated Chinese violinist, I was surprised by his affable, laid back persona. With a thick mane of dark, wavy hair and a warm smile, Lu is unassuming and attentive. It is when he starts to talk about the loves in his life – music and more recently wine – that you sense the fire and intensity within. 

Blog Image: 

 Even with hundreds of wine labels available to us in a typical wine retail shop, some wine names and labels stand out. We find that we recognise the bottle itself, its packaging perhaps, the name of the region written on the bottle, the producer or possibility the grape variety. The packaging and all the information on the bottle are clues but what makes the information, logo, name and the wine memorable enough for it to become a brand?

Blog Image: 

 This year, more than 6,000 wine brokers and several hundred wine writers arrived in Bordeaux end of March to taste the infant 2011 wines. While some wines were still not saying much, others showed their potential to be blended and polished.

Blog Image: 

Once upon a time the most expensive wines in the world were sweet. Champagne as we know it, with its fine bubbles, crisp, linear dry style was not in vogue. Instead, Champagne had noticeable residual sugar, and probably tasted more like Moscato d’Asti, the lightly sweet sparkling wine from Italy, than Brut non vintage Champagne that we are familiar with today. It wasn’t only sweet Champagne that was popular around the world, it was all sweet wines.

Blog Image: 

 When New Food - the official media sponsor for the 86th China National Food, Wine & Spirits Fair - invited me to speak at its gala dinner in Chengdu earlier this month, I was immediately interested. Many China-based wine professionals had told me it was the largest and possibly the most important wine fair of its kind on the mainland. Since it is supported at the national level, the scale is huge and wine vies for attention among a host of local alcoholic beverages. 

Blog Image: 

I came across a question recently that food and drink writer Fiona Beckett posed that intrigued me: “Why are some red wines so soft and soupy?” This was the exact question I asked myself while reviewing over 200 modestly priced (HK$250 or below) wines recently. The vast majority of the wines were broad on the palate with non-descript fruit, sometimes a bit syrupy with high alcohol and barely detectable acidity. The wines were clean and without faults, with tutti-fruity or confectionary fruit profile.

Blog Image: 

I was invited to a wonderful discussion led by Lidia Bastianich about the evolution of Italian food in America while I was in New York City last week. She spoke about her journey throughout the United States while doing research for her seventh book, Lidia’s Italy in America. Lidia Bastianich is a well-loved author, television celebrity and successful restaurateur with twenty-two Italian restaurants in the United States. She has written many cookbooks but her latest book is a chronicle of the Italian immigrants experience in America as seen through the food they eat.

Blog Image: 

Wine lovers in Hong Kong are so generous opening great bottles of wine that often I am guilty of writing mostly about the rarest, finest and most expensive wines. It is easy to be lyrical and sing the praises of a forty or fifty year old wine that tastes like poetry in a bottle. I do, however, taste at the opposite end of the spectrum – when I am choosing economy class wines for Singapore airlines, tasting samples sent to my office or adding value for money wines to Galaxy Macau’s wine list.

Blog Image: 

 “Eighty percent of pre 1980 Burgundies sold at auction are fake,” says Laurent Ponsot who was recently in Hong Kong. That figure is higher than anything I could have imagined and came as a shock to me when Ponsot mentioned it matter-of-factly. “I have been on a personal crusade for the past four years,” adds Ponsot. “I need to find out who has fake Burgundies, of course mine as well as other peoples’, and who is selling them.”