{"text":[[{"start":5.28,"text":"In March 2001, I was part of a small group tasting the 2000s en primeur in Bordeaux. We were staying at Le Saint-James, a smart hotel just outside the city, and had all retired to bed when suddenly a loud smoke alarm went off."}],[{"start":19.52,"text":"It turned out that one of our number had decided to enjoy a cigar in his room. Paulo Pong had just turned 24 and was starting Altaya Wines, now one of Hong Kong’s most prominent wine companies. From my conversations with him, it was clear that he was not only a bon viveur but also extremely knowledgeable about wine."}],[{"start":38.72,"text":"Furthermore, although a member of the family who own Hong Kong’s only steel plant, founded by his grandfather in 1958, he was not afraid to get his hands dirty. He’d already done a harvest for the Moueix family, who own Petrus (Pong still keeps the francs he was paid in his wallet), and had worked in the cellars of Ch Cheval Blanc (commuting there from Le Saint-James). I started to think he might make an ideal son-in-law."}],[{"start":63.72,"text":"He made a much more advantageous match than one of my daughters, however. In 2012, he married Sonia Cheng, daughter of billionaire Hong Kong property tycoon Henry Cheng, and now CEO of her family’s growing group of Rosewood hotels. The couple have five sporty children aged from 13 down to three, all with names beginning with A."}],[{"start":84.1,"text":"Pong is the youngest of his own family by quite a margin and suspects this is why he was allowed to indulge his almost lifelong interest in wine. He remembers as a child being fascinated by the names of the wines served at anniversary dinners by his father — the likes of Margaux and Chambertin — and always wanted a sip of his own. For his high-school graduation present in 1996, he asked for a trip to Napa Valley, even though he was not legally of age to drink in the US. He later attended university at MIT, where he says he read far more about wine than about the material science and engineering he was ostensibly studying. (Nearing 50, he still looks extremely youthful; I can only guess how he was received in California as a teen.)"}],[{"start":127.04,"text":"The childhood friend who accompanied Pong on his first wine trips went to Oxford which, for Pong, meant access to its well-stocked college cellars. In the holidays, he worked for Hyatt hotels in Hong Kong, and also did a stint at Terence Conran’s Pont de la Tour in London. “In my early twenties, I had to decide whether to go into restaurants or the wine trade,” he says. “I picked wine because I saw it would require less capital and it would be easier to build a team.”"}],[{"start":155.44,"text":"By 2001, Pong was importing his first wines commercially, the sort of smart bordeaux he had already been buying privately from Bordeaux negociants. Family friends were initially happy to support a young man’s venture."}],[{"start":168.7,"text":"It was around 2003 that Pong managed something that would prove virtually a licence to print money. This was when in Asia wine meant red bordeaux, and long before burgundy became so fashionable and so extraordinarily expensive. The Altaya plan was to specialise in representing “boutique, family-owned wineries” from regions such as Champagne, Burgundy and Napa Valley. At that stage, even the most famous names in Burgundy — Rousseau, Roumier and Dujac, some of whose bottles are now priced at thousands of pounds each — were little known by the burgeoning army of Chinese wine collectors, so Pong had no great difficulty in adding them to Altaya’s extensive portfolio."}],[{"start":208.84,"text":"“Being from Hong Kong opened doors because many producers didn’t have representation in Asia and they thought Hong Kong would provide an opening,” explained Pong on a recent stopover in London en route to Bordeaux."}],[{"start":220.64,"text":"“It would be much more difficult [to sign these burgundies up] today,” he says. “Even getting an appointment, even if you’re a wine merchant, is impossible.”"}],[{"start":228.92,"text":"But the masterstroke that made Hong Kong an El Dorado for wine merchants for a few years came in February 2008, when duty on wine was reduced to zero, just as wine buying became a major interest for significant numbers of well-heeled Chinese mainlanders. Wine duties in China were and are punitive, amounting to more than 40 per cent of the value of the wine. A thriving trade developed across the border, typically with human mules carrying the legal allowance of bottles from Hong Kong into China multiple times a day."}],[{"start":263.12,"text":"Much tighter controls have now been imposed by the Chinese government, including a requirement that there be a 14-day interval between individual border crossings for those carrying duty-free alcohol, and annual cash limits on how much individuals may spend on imported wine — all facilitated by China’s increasingly cashless society."}],[{"start":282.24,"text":"But between 2008 and 2012, according to Pong, “the level of sales increased exponentially. Instead of selling cases, we were selling pallets of wines like Ch Lafite.” Knowing how many British wine merchants flocked to Hong Kong then, I wondered how they affected Altaya’s sales. “The pie was big enough for everyone when the market was booming,” he says."}],[{"start":304.52,"text":"And what a boom it was. Those selling bordeaux — still the only wine of interest to the Chinese then — profited enormously, wildly overcharging for the 2009 and 2010 vintages offered en primeur that, predictably, fell in value so that by 2012 the Chinese had lost interest in investing in wine. Such was the exuberance of the Hong Kong wine market after 2008 that for a few years Hong Kong replaced London and New York as the leading centre of wine auctions, also aided by Asia’s relative resilience during the era’s financial crisis."}],[{"start":338.76,"text":"There have, however, been major hurdles to overcome. In 2019 and 2020, street-wide protests and the pandemic virtually brought commerce to a standstill — although individual wine lovers were as self-indulgent at home during Hong Kong’s stringent lockdown as they were elsewhere in the world."}],[{"start":356.2,"text":"For many years post-2008, Hong Kong was famous among wine lovers for the quality of the wines routinely consumed there, the likes of Bordeaux first growths and Burgundy grands crus. But today — as in mainland China — a much wider range of wines is enjoyed. Not just reds, not just French, and not just the famous names. The amounts spent are lower and the HK wine trade is having to cope with a new reality."}],[{"start":381.5,"text":"As Jo Purcell, who has managed Farr Vintners’ HK outpost since 1996, put it in an email explaining the new cross-border rules, it was “a once-in-a-lifetime experience in the trade — what a privilege it was to be in the right place at the right time.”"}],[{"start":397.08,"text":"Pong, meanwhile, has been filling his time with civic commitments. His bio lists 14 of them, including chairing the board of the territory’s five-year-old contemporary art museum M+, through which he is busy forging alliances with the Pompidou Centre in Paris, MoMA in New York and, he hopes, Tate Modern in London. He’s also advising some of those producing wine in China’s wine province Ningxia, but points out that some of these new wines are more expensive, and much younger, than the mature vintages of bordeaux currently offering such good value."}],[{"start":428.66,"text":"About his first love, he says, “I really don’t know where Bordeaux is going. The wines are better than ever. Prices have come down somewhat. But people don’t have the patience to wait for wines like these to mature. With so many high quality wines at moderate prices, it’s a great time to be a consumer.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":445.7,"text":"Tasting notes, scores and suggested drink dates on Purple Pages of JancisRobinson.com. International stockists on Wine-searcher.com"}],[{"start":451.18,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram"}],[{"start":460.8,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1792220508_6560.mp3"}