Hong Kong Member Interest Group wine tasting evening
The Hong Kong Members' Interest Group (HKMIG) held its first wine-tasting event on the evening of 2 August 2012 at Adelaide Cellar Doors. This was a chance for UK members based in Hong Kong to meet in a more sociable environment and it proved to be a popular event indeed.
All the wines were from Australia and we started out with a sparkling white to help add some fizz to the evening.
The whites
Mosquito Hill “Blanc de Blanc” 2009 had a good bite to it, with hints of cream and French baguettes, and was certainly well received by the connoisseurs amongst the crowd. Two more whites followed, Garfield & Thomas Riesling 2004 (think honey on toast) and a crowd pleaser Little Goat Sauvignon Blanc 2011, which was blind tasted for a prize.
Blind-tasting
With the winner being offered a trip on a racing yacht (with unlimited wine, of course), the sniffing and swirling of wine could soon be heard from the outlying islands and concentration levels in the room were on par with an actuarial exam hall.
The first question was what variety of grape the wine came from and with actuaries being well versed in oenology, everyone got the correct answer (or was that just the herd effect?).
The next question, however, stumped 90% of the crowd and this was to identify the wine region (correct answer: Marlborough).
The final question was to estimate the price, and of course, being actuaries, the estimates were pretty robust.
Well done to Roddy Anderson (pictured above) on being the eventual winner, with his guess of “less than HKD499”!
The reds
Two red wines then followed, a King Valley Wood Park Whitlands Pinot Noir 2009 (black cherries and plums) and a Barossa Valley Hahn Catharina Shiraz 2008 (powerful spicy aroma of peppery fruit), which seemed to be the most popular (and expensive) wine of the evening. The final course was a Buller Fine Old Muscat dessert wine which was accompanied with a good helping of chocolate. This provided the perfect finish to the very enjoyable wine tasting night.
The HKMIG would like to thank to Adelaide Cellar Doors for hosting and the staff at ASHK for providing invaluable support to the event.
Join the Hong Kong MIG and participate in future events
If you are a UK member based in Hong Kong and would like to add your name to the mailing list for future events, then please email Tiffany Wong at actsoff@netvigator.com with your contact details.
A small gallery of photographs taken on the night is available here.
Peter Lee FIA