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Quenching the dragon


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Max Allen From: The Australian April 16, 2011 12:00AM

NAHM Restaurant in Bangkok's very glam Metropolitan Hotel is a surprise for any visiting food and wine lover. The quality of the food isn't unexpected: for almost two decades Nahm chef David Thompson has been regarded as one of the most extraordinary exponents of classic Thai cooking on the planet. No, the surprise at Nahm is reserved instead for the wine list.

Not only is the list stuffed with a really interesting selection of wines from around the world -- Alsace, Germany, California, Australia and elsewhere -- but most of the wines are refreshingly well-priced. A glass of the fabulous Grosset Springvale Clare Valley Riesling, for example, will set you back 475 baht -- about $15. And a bottle will cost you 2400 baht ($77). That's less than you'd have to pay for the same wine at a similarly posh diner in Sydney.

Here's another surprise. A couple of weeks ago, this magazine's own James Halliday hosted a wine dinner featuring some of Australia's top small-scale vignerons, including Phillip Jones from Bass Phillip, Clare Halloran from TarraWarra and Neil Prentice from Moondarra as part of a week-long celebration of Burgundy and pinot noir. Again, this is hardly unusual: Halliday spends half his life at events like this, as do the winemakers. What made this dinner special is the fact that it happened at the Coriander Leaf restaurant in Singapore.

These are just a couple of examples of how the wine scene across Asia is changing. Not that long ago, if you managed to find wine in a shop in Hong Kong or a restaurant in Tokyo it was either a mass-produced commercial brand such as Jacob's Creek with a price tag horribly inflated by local taxes and duties, or an even more eye-wateringly expensive Grand Cru Burgundy -- and very little in between.

More and more good, interesting, artisanal wines from small to medium-sized producers are popping up on retail shelves and restaurant lists from Singapore to Shanghai, and while prices do tend to be higher than they are in Australia, they aren't always as wincingly extortionate as they once were. In short, many parts of Asia are becoming more wine-friendly -- which is good news for both Australian tourists and Australian winemakers.

"We are definitely seeing a greater range of interesting wines in China," says South Australian Campbell Thompson, managing director of The Wine Republic, one of China's most dynamic import and distribution businesses. "And there is growing interest here in such wines."

Frontier spirit

THE winemakers' dinner that James Halliday hosted was organised by Curtis Marsh, a New Zealand-born former sommelier and wine distributor who moved from Melbourne 10 years ago to live first in Hong Kong and now Singapore, where he works as a wine writer and consultant. "Singapore has become a really big wine hub for South-East Asia," says Marsh. "There's a huge, fantastic, high-tech wine storage facility here, and a lot of the distributors base themselves here to service Thailand, the Malaysian peninsula and places like that. There's a bit of a gold-rush, frontier feeling about the wine scene at the moment."

While Marsh says mark-ups on wine lists in Singapore can still be extortionate, the tax is volumetric: $7.50 is added to every wine regardless of whether it's a $10 bottle of Jacob's Creek or a $100 bottle of champagne. This makes wines at the premium and ultra-premium end of the market look like better value than the cheaper end of the market, especially in the burgeoning retail sector.

Attracted by the opportunities in such a new and vibrant market, South-East Asia is crawling with winemakers eager to show retailers and sommeliers their wares. "These flying winemakers are constantly parachuting in, conducting SAS-style raids to get their wines listed," jokes Marsh. " The more they pop in to Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur on holiday, the more their wines pop up on the best restaurant lists. But they have to keep visiting or some other winemaker will come along and then he'll be flavour of the month."

That's why Marsh was so keen to get winemakers from Australia and New Zealand along to his recent program of dinners. "The guys from Château Latour and Burgundy are here all the time, doing vertical tastings. That's why their wines do so well."

The expat influence

ACCORDING to Marsh, a wider range of Australian wines is now available in Asian restaurants partly because so many expat Aussies are managing them. Nahm's sommelier in Bangkok, for example, is Troy Sutton, who started his career at Sydney's Rockpool.

Sutton says most of the wines on his list offer reasonable value -- even taking into account the Thai government's 400 per cent "luxury" tax on all wine -- because they are not that well known and don't carry the cachet of the Grand Cru Burgundies or highly desirable cult wines such as Cloudy Bay sav blanc (which, at Nahm, is 5000 baht, or $160 -- considerably more than you'd pay at that posh Sydney diner).

"This pricing may seem... erratic," admits Sutton. "But it's based on the price suppliers charge us. Many suppliers charge what the market can 'bear' for a wine here. For example, Cloudy Bay is very popular and has a big following so the price is far higher than in Australia. The Grosset Springvale Riesling, though, is keenly priced as our supplier offers a discount for listing it by the glass. Cape Mentelle Semillon Sauvignon Blanc, Grosset Riesling and Yering Station Pinot Noir are now among our best-sellers."

Another passionate advocate of broadening the range of wines in Asia is Ned Goodwin, an Australian Master of Wine who has spent the past 10 years living in Tokyo (he flew back home with his young family last month after the earthquake but plans to return). Goodwin consults to a number of restaurants including Salt, the Tokyo outpost of Sydney chef Luke Mangan's restaurant empire, which boasts a 100 per cent Australian wine list full of small, high-quality labels that aren't even all that common on lists here.

"The Japanese market for wine has changed dramatically in the last couple of years," says Goodwin. "Sure, sommeliers -- especially in the big hotel restaurants -- are still infatuated with the Old World regional wines like Bordeaux and Chablis. But consumers are very open to Australian wines because they don't have any preconceptions: the market is there for the taking for any premium artisanal Australian wine. There's a great deal of interest in wines like Sorrenberg [a very small biodynamic vineyard in Beechworth]. The Japanese are maniacs for anything that smacks of artisanship and a good story to tell."

To illustrate his point, Goodwin tells the story of visiting a "Mediterranean" restaurant outside Tokyo recently. "The chef was a Japanese guy who'd lived in Liguria in Italy and fallen in love with the region's food and wine. So on the list he had 15 different examples of pigato [a variety native to Liguria]. The guy had worked in Corsica, too, so he was a Rhône nut: plenty of Côte Rôties and Cornas on the list. And at the back he had bottles of Curly Flat and Hochkirch pinot noir -- wines from tiny, tiny Australian producers in this Ligurian restaurant in Japan. Crazy."

Hong Kong is experiencing a wine boom, too, according to the head of Christie's Wine Department in China, Simon Tam. This is mainly because the tax on wine has been recently abolished, but Tam says that's not the only reason. "The zero duty environment has led to a situation where every other grandmother is opening a wine shop," he says. "And because there are a lot more wines here than ever before, it's made wine prices in restaurants more transparent. Restaurants are used to putting a 300 per cent mark-up on wine. But now that consumers can buy Dom Perignon for HK$1400 [$175] in a shop, when they see the same wine for HK$5000 [$622] on a wine list they say, 'Bugger that'. It's forcing the restaurants to change their pricing."

Hold on. Dom Perignon for $175?

In Hong Kong? Things really have changed.

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Max Allen From: The Australian April 16, 2011 12:00AM

NAHM Restaurant in Bangkok's very glam Metropolitan Hotel is a surprise for any visiting food and wine lover. The quality of the food isn't unexpected: for almost two decades Nahm chef David Thompson has been regarded as one of the most extraordinary exponents of classic Thai cooking on the planet. No, the surprise at Nahm is reserved instead for the wine list.

Not only is the list stuffed with a really interesting selection of wines from around the world -- Alsace, Germany, California, Australia and elsewhere -- but most of the wines are refreshingly well-priced. A glass of the fabulous Grosset Springvale Clare Valley Riesling, for example, will set you back 475 baht -- about $15. And a bottle will cost you 2400 baht ($77). That's less than you'd have to pay for the same wine at a similarly posh diner in Sydney.

Here's another surprise. A couple of weeks ago, this magazine's own James Halliday hosted a wine dinner featuring some of Australia's top small-scale vignerons, including Phillip Jones from Bass Phillip, Clare Halloran from TarraWarra and Neil Prentice from Moondarra as part of a week-long celebration of Burgundy and pinot noir. Again, this is hardly unusual: Halliday spends half his life at events like this, as do the winemakers. What made this dinner special is the fact that it happened at the Coriander Leaf restaurant in Singapore.

These are just a couple of examples of how the wine scene across Asia is changing. Not that long ago, if you managed to find wine in a shop in Hong Kong or a restaurant in Tokyo it was either a mass-produced commercial brand such as Jacob's Creek with a price tag horribly inflated by local taxes and duties, or an even more eye-wateringly expensive Grand Cru Burgundy -- and very little in between.

More and more good, interesting, artisanal wines from small to medium-sized producers are popping up on retail shelves and restaurant lists from Singapore to Shanghai, and while prices do tend to be higher than they are in Australia, they aren't always as wincingly extortionate as they once were. In short, many parts of Asia are becoming more wine-friendly -- which is good news for both Australian tourists and Australian winemakers.

"We are definitely seeing a greater range of interesting wines in China," says South Australian Campbell Thompson, managing director of The Wine Republic, one of China's most dynamic import and distribution businesses. "And there is growing interest here in such wines."

Frontier spirit

THE winemakers' dinner that James Halliday hosted was organised by Curtis Marsh, a New Zealand-born former sommelier and wine distributor who moved from Melbourne 10 years ago to live first in Hong Kong and now Singapore, where he works as a wine writer and consultant. "Singapore has become a really big wine hub for South-East Asia," says Marsh. "There's a huge, fantastic, high-tech wine storage facility here, and a lot of the distributors base themselves here to service Thailand, the Malaysian peninsula and places like that. There's a bit of a gold-rush, frontier feeling about the wine scene at the moment."

While Marsh says mark-ups on wine lists in Singapore can still be extortionate, the tax is volumetric: $7.50 is added to every wine regardless of whether it's a $10 bottle of Jacob's Creek or a $100 bottle of champagne. This makes wines at the premium and ultra-premium end of the market look like better value than the cheaper end of the market, especially in the burgeoning retail sector.

Attracted by the opportunities in such a new and vibrant market, South-East Asia is crawling with winemakers eager to show retailers and sommeliers their wares. "These flying winemakers are constantly parachuting in, conducting SAS-style raids to get their wines listed," jokes Marsh. " The more they pop in to Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur on holiday, the more their wines pop up on the best restaurant lists. But they have to keep visiting or some other winemaker will come along and then he'll be flavour of the month."

That's why Marsh was so keen to get winemakers from Australia and New Zealand along to his recent program of dinners. "The guys from Château Latour and Burgundy are here all the time, doing vertical tastings. That's why their wines do so well."

The expat influence

ACCORDING to Marsh, a wider range of Australian wines is now available in Asian restaurants partly because so many expat Aussies are managing them. Nahm's sommelier in Bangkok, for example, is Troy Sutton, who started his career at Sydney's Rockpool.

Sutton says most of the wines on his list offer reasonable value -- even taking into account the Thai government's 400 per cent "luxury" tax on all wine -- because they are not that well known and don't carry the cachet of the Grand Cru Burgundies or highly desirable cult wines such as Cloudy Bay sav blanc (which, at Nahm, is 5000 baht, or $160 -- considerably more than you'd pay at that posh Sydney diner).

"This pricing may seem... erratic," admits Sutton. "But it's based on the price suppliers charge us. Many suppliers charge what the market can 'bear' for a wine here. For example, Cloudy Bay is very popular and has a big following so the price is far higher than in Australia. The Grosset Springvale Riesling, though, is keenly priced as our supplier offers a discount for listing it by the glass. Cape Mentelle Semillon Sauvignon Blanc, Grosset Riesling and Yering Station Pinot Noir are now among our best-sellers."

Another passionate advocate of broadening the range of wines in Asia is Ned Goodwin, an Australian Master of Wine who has spent the past 10 years living in Tokyo (he flew back home with his young family last month after the earthquake but plans to return). Goodwin consults to a number of restaurants including Salt, the Tokyo outpost of Sydney chef Luke Mangan's restaurant empire, which boasts a 100 per cent Australian wine list full of small, high-quality labels that aren't even all that common on lists here.

"The Japanese market for wine has changed dramatically in the last couple of years," says Goodwin. "Sure, sommeliers -- especially in the big hotel restaurants -- are still infatuated with the Old World regional wines like Bordeaux and Chablis. But consumers are very open to Australian wines because they don't have any preconceptions: the market is there for the taking for any premium artisanal Australian wine. There's a great deal of interest in wines like Sorrenberg [a very small biodynamic vineyard in Beechworth]. The Japanese are maniacs for anything that smacks of artisanship and a good story to tell."

To illustrate his point, Goodwin tells the story of visiting a "Mediterranean" restaurant outside Tokyo recently. "The chef was a Japanese guy who'd lived in Liguria in Italy and fallen in love with the region's food and wine. So on the list he had 15 different examples of pigato [a variety native to Liguria]. The guy had worked in Corsica, too, so he was a Rhône nut: plenty of Côte Rôties and Cornas on the list. And at the back he had bottles of Curly Flat and Hochkirch pinot noir -- wines from tiny, tiny Australian producers in this Ligurian restaurant in Japan. Crazy."

Hong Kong is experiencing a wine boom, too, according to the head of Christie's Wine Department in China, Simon Tam. This is mainly because the tax on wine has been recently abolished, but Tam says that's not the only reason. "The zero duty environment has led to a situation where every other grandmother is opening a wine shop," he says. "And because there are a lot more wines here than ever before, it's made wine prices in restaurants more transparent. Restaurants are used to putting a 300 per cent mark-up on wine. But now that consumers can buy Dom Perignon for HK$1400 [$175] in a shop, when they see the same wine for HK$5000 [$622] on a wine list they say, 'Bugger that'. It's forcing the restaurants to change their pricing."

Hold on. Dom Perignon for $175?

In Hong Kong? Things really have changed.

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