#103 - Richard Hemming MW: Master of Asian Food & Wine Pairing | Wine Makers Show: the wine podcast

Description

Discover how Richard Hemming went from a student with zero wine knowledge to a Master of Wine, a writer for Jancis Robinson, and now Head of Wine for 67 Pall Mall Asia.

We explore his bold move to Singapore, the creation of his book Wine and the Food of Asia, and his deep dive into pairing wine with Asian cuisines. We also talk about the evolution of wine media, the rise of Chinese wines, and the behind-the-scenes reality of building one of the world’s most exciting wine clubs.

If you love wine, stories of unexpected careers, and fresh insights into the global wine scene, you’ll want to tune in to this inspiring interview with Richard Hemming. I had an absolute blast speaking with him because it reveals the surprising, human side of one of the most respected voices in wine.

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📚 One In a Billion: Becoming India’s First Master of Wine, by Sonal C. Holland MW, India’s first Master of Wine: a deeply inspiring memoir about determination, passion, and overcoming the odds

📚 Wine & The Food of Asia, by Richard Hemming: explores how to successfully pair wines with the rich diversity of Asian cuisines, from Indian to Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Chinese and more

🍷 Discover the 67 Pall Mall universe

🤓 Join the Academy and learn all you need to know about wine

🎁 Get your wine essentials on our shop: a curated selection of wine glasses, posters and much more

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⭐️ ABOUT ⭐️ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

My name is Antoine, and I’ve been passionate about wine for several years. I knew nothing at first, so I went out to meet the biggest figures in the industry and turned those encounters into a podcast that’s now listened to by over 100,000 people. I now share with you what I’ve learned, and I hope we embark together on a beautiful wine journey to discover the finest experiences.

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Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi, Richard.
Speaker #1
Hi.
Speaker #0
Thank you very much for having us at 67 Pall Mall on Hollywood in Hong Kong. So it's actually the second time we start this recording, but I didn't have the answer to the first question. We had a machine at the back just making some terrible noise. So we decided to start again. I was saying thank you very much for having us. You're the head of wine for 67 Pall Mall. You're a master of wine. You've recently published a book about wine and the food of Asia.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Among plenty of other things, I'm sure, that we'll dig into it. My first question is always the same. Can you start by introducing yourself?
Speaker #1
Sure. So my name is Richard Hemming, and I am a master of wine. As you said, I've been a master of wine since 2015, but I started my wine career in 2001, which was in London working for a retailer called Majestic. and before that I had no wine knowledge but... After I started with them, I went through the WSET and then I left them in 2007, started working in Australia. And from there, I started writing for Jancis Robinson's website. And then fast forward to 2019 and I relocated to Singapore, which is where I'm based now, as head of Wine Asia for 67 Pal Mal, but also still working for Jancis. and doing a few other things too.
Speaker #0
What made you decide to go into this first wine retailer, wine shop? How did you... Was it just like, okay, there is light, I need a job, let's go for it?
Speaker #1
Yeah, pretty much like that. You know, I was studying in Leeds University. And I had a degree in English, but I didn't want to be a... English teacher or anything like that. So I was looking for a job and they were advertising in the back of the student newspaper for this wine shop called Majestic Wine. So I applied for the job and that was it. I had no idea about wine, really. I drank the cheapest wine that they were selling in the supermarkets back then. I remember it was a Spanish wine and it was red, but that was it. I had nothing, no knowledge at all. And so it was really just the fact that it was a good career it looked like they had a scheme to promote their trainees so that you could move up quickly and you could be a manager of a shop so that was why and what um like
Speaker #0
before started this job maybe it's a difficult question because it may be a bit harder to remember now but when you started a job did you add in mind something that you were sure was true for the wine industry or for the wine people and actually turned out to be wrong or the other way around that's like a certitude that you had and actually after a few days of working you're like yeah oh that's a good question no i i assumed when i started that wine
Speaker #1
was this very um specialized subject that you had to learn a lot about before you could enjoy it and then ironically enough when i learned a lot about it I understood how, you know, really it should just be accessible. It should just be a daily pleasure that you enjoy with meals, that you share a glass with friends. But the culture in the UK was never really like that. You know, in France and in mainland Europe, the culture of just opening a bottle with your family on a daily basis, I think, is much more normal. And in the family I grew up in, you know, wine was something very special. You would only have it.
Speaker #0
On Sunday, isn't that?
Speaker #1
For Sunday lunch. And my dad would buy a bottle. He had no idea what he was buying, but he liked the idea of buying a bottle of wine and having a glass with Sunday roast. And so I always viewed it as this very specialized subject. And then, like I said, I came to understand that really the true pleasure of wine is that it just brings people together to share a glass, talk, have some good food. and you don't need to know what it is so long as you're enjoying it and sharing it with people. I think that's the main power that wine has.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it definitely gathers people and makes you more open to communicate. I don't know, it must be rooted in our DNA or historic things, but it's funny that you say that. In the podcast, we had the opportunity to interview Pierre Lurton from Cheval Blanc and Ikem. And we were talking, like, his wines are absolutely exceptional among the top wines in the world. And we were talking about how... still simple the like the best moments you can have with these wines are not in like a you know white napkin super classifying it's just like opening a bottle on a on a friday evening with your wife and a few friends yeah and then you just uh you just enjoy it yeah and with simple dishes and things like that it makes the the whole difference so it's so true and and when And sometimes when I've experienced some of the most...
Speaker #1
prestigious bottles you know the very fancy most expensive whether it's burgundy or nappa or anything often i experience those as a professional in a professional context so at a tasting you know it's very clinical and you're taking detailed tasting notes and everybody's concentrating and actually you don't really have much fun you don't really enjoy the wine as it's intended but you can have a very humble wine in a great setting with people that you love and that brings it alive you know and that context is so important and i think it's one of the things that's easy to forget when people become obsessed with particular labels or you know collecting certain vintages they can forget that actually you know it's not really about what's inside the bottle it's what experience you're having outside the bottle yeah
Speaker #0
And it's like one of the good ways to reduce that is to try to taste blindly almost everything, you know. Yeah. And just see if you enjoy it or not. That type of thing makes the game way more fun, you know. Yes. Just with friends, everyone brings a bottle, you don't know what you're drinking. And then suddenly you realize that you like certain things that you thought were absolutely horrible the other way around. Yeah. So it's fun. So how long do you work at this first experience in the UK?
Speaker #1
It was six years. And because I had no wine knowledge when I started, during that time, I did all of the WSET qualifications. So I took the diploma, I think, in 2005. And then I left the company in 2007.
Speaker #0
Okay. And then, so you leave this company, you told me you were going to Australia. Is it because you had an opportunity there or you had no idea and just took a plane?
Speaker #1
A bit of both. I had an opportunity to do vintage in McLaren Vale. in 2008. So I went over to Australia in 2007 and I was 29 years old at the time. And that was my last chance to get a holiday working visa. So I worked, I could work there for one year and you could only stay in a job for six months. So I landed in Sydney and I got a job at a wine shop. And then I went to McLaren Vale in early 2008 to do vintage there.
Speaker #0
And what did you experience? So it was your first time in the vineyard?
Speaker #1
Yeah. And actually, most of my time I was in the winery. They made a lot of Shiraz. And I was mostly doing pump overs. So it's very physical. It was an extremely hot vintage, like even more hot than South Australia is normally. So I was just carting all of these hoses around and setting up. pump overs and it was it was a great learning experience like actually being able to understand how all of these things work in practice fantastic learning experience i've got to say it put me off making wine for life like i'm glad i'd done it once but i don't really want to do it again it's not it's not the thing that makes me excited um i love visiting and i love talking to people and tasting the wine of course but physically making the wine no that's not for me
Speaker #0
And do you think that seeing that, did it change your perception of selling wines, sharing wines? You know, like, were you realizing that in this first job in the UK, you were missing something?
Speaker #1
Yes. Well, it was more that having this perspective on the inside of how wine is made allowed me to write a diary of my experiences. which is how I got onto jantisrobinson.com. So I never planned it that way, but it was seeing the inside of the reality of production. And I wrote about it every week. I was writing a kind of report and it was sort of incognito. So I wasn't naming the producer. And I was able to be quite honest about everything that was going on. You know, there was a few practices that were a little bit hidden you know watering down the the the ferments that kind of thing so it was very honest and i think a lot of people appreciated the fact that i was able to just be truthful. So that was how I ended up going into the communication side of the wine industry. So it wasn't so much that, you know, I had an intention or that I was expecting to get a certain experience, but it was very fortunate that I managed to have this opportunity to start writing. And then that took me into my next phase.
Speaker #0
Which was next phase still Australia, because you stayed longer than a year, actually.
Speaker #1
uh no actually i know so i came back to london later that year um and then i met with uh jancis who you know she'd been very very kind and had published these articles but i'd never met her in person and this was before zoom calls right so we hadn't even met online we just emailed and she said that she was happy for me to continue writing for the website and so that was yeah 2008 and ever since then i've been writing for the site on a regular basis.
Speaker #0
And when you started writing about this experience in Australia, were you already publishing yourself online? Or you were sending it to Gen 6 and a few people?
Speaker #1
Yes, exactly that. It's funny because back then, this was before Twitter, before Instagram.
Speaker #0
You were doing a newsletter.
Speaker #1
Not even that. You know what I was doing? I was writing articles. and then just saving them as Word documents on my computer. I never did anything with them, except I entered this competition, which was run in the UK, and it was for young wine writers. And I never actually won, but I came second. And I think the winner got a contract to write for a magazine, but the second place got nothing. I was so close. And that's why I thought, well, okay, I must be okay at writing. So then I just decided to send the article that I had written to Jancis Robinson, but also to a few other people. And I just said, do whatever you want. Yeah, is this any good? Can you help? And it was Jancis that got back to me and said, well, yeah, why don't we figure something out?
Speaker #0
And so it started like that and you continued.
Speaker #1
ever ever since writing and being with her yeah and i think a lot of people work like that in wine um you because it's a it's an it's an industry that brings people together and it's very hospitable and it's very communal and so you get these opportunities that you never expected and then you just kind of follow them and see where they go and you know i never would have predicted i would come to Singapore. I never would have predicted I would be doing, you know, writing books and working in membership clubs. But it all happened one thing after the other.
Speaker #0
How did you, what did you notice in wine media? So it's been like 10 years you've been writing about wine and like gravitating around this place. What changes have you seen in the wine media?
Speaker #1
Well, I've been... I think both lucky and in a way unlucky. When I started out 2008, my ambition was to get a newspaper column because at the time that was the best way of getting your name out there. And it's still, obviously it would be a great, very prestigious thing to have, but nowadays, really there's so few good... newspaper columns available because the media landscape has changed completely. So I've been unfortunate in that way because a lot of the money in writing has disappeared. You know, there's no kind of good way to make a profit in print media anymore, really. And even online, if you want to earn a living, you're probably having to do sponsorship deals or advertising. It's very hard to get. readers to actually pay you their own money to take your content. I mean, it's just normal now. So that perhaps was kind of unlucky timing. But then, of course, what happened in its place is social media has been the biggest change. And I was on Twitter for quite a long time, Instagram, not so much, but all of those platforms for communication. sub stack is something that i'm now doing uh quite a lot and i'm really enjoying that and actually that is a way that you can get people to pay you you know for your content and i just feel like it's a really interesting So the dynamic has shifted a lot. It's much easier now to get anybody can go online and publish themselves. And that's quite amazing when you think about it. You know, 20 years ago, that was impossible. You could have a blog. But really, it was very different to today. So anybody can do it. As a result, there's a lot of competition. There's a lot of voices out there. It's hard to cut through the noise. And it's also hard to make an income. But in terms of, you know, being able to speak directly to your audience, I mean, there's nothing better. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So, by the way, this podcast is not sponsored or advertised. So you've heard the return of the state to reach out to me. No, but I guess Substack or the renewal of newsletter as we now know it, it's kind of the same as being. in a good column in a good newspaper yeah because it's the same for me it's kind of the same atmosphere that you could have maybe 20 30 40 years ago when you were reading a newspaper and there weren't just advertisement everywhere and and you know it's often well written it often goes in depth in a topic and like it's just at least the the sub stack i'm following it's always I feel very good quality writing about things that are really interesting to me. And so for me, it's really the equivalent of being in a good newspaper.
Speaker #1
Well, that's nice to hear because I feel the same. And I actually follow more non-wine writers. So I follow some people who write about entertainment and culture. And I don't... buy any newspapers now you know it's a shame because i love the idea of newspapers but the convenience of getting an emailed report from your favorite writers you know once a week or once a month is just fantastic um and what i think will be a big question is how sustainable is it for individuals to subscribe to multiple substacks you know if you have 10 substacks that you pay money for that you're paying quite a lot yeah it starts to be a lot and i think maybe we'll see some consolidation there um i saw somebody actually writing about this on substack saying that they wish that you could pay substack a monthly fee and
Speaker #0
that each month you could change who you subscribe to yeah and then five subscription and yeah they share money and actually i really see the point of that
Speaker #1
So I think we're going to see more changes in that field.
Speaker #0
Yeah, for sure. Because there is no newsletter super expensive, but it can be like three, four US per month. But if you do that like 10 times, you end up spending 50, 60, even 100 US per month on newsletter, which is a lot. Okay, so you've continued writing like that. Back to London. you're working with with Genesis Robinson and so then you have the opportunity to go to Singapore is it with 67 or still with with Genesis no it was neither actually so it was
Speaker #1
2018 and when the Brexit vote came my wife and I just decided that we wanted to move and we were we had no idea where so we just started looking My wife at the time was a head teacher of a primary school. So we knew that we could go anywhere that has international schools. And we found a few different options, but the best one was in Singapore. And I'd been to Singapore once and I thought, okay, well, seems great. So she applied for the job. She got the job. Within less than one year, we'd moved, relocated. And we had honestly no intention of doing it before. So it happened very quick. At the same time, by sheer coincidence, 67 Palmal was starting to develop a club in Singapore. And I was a member of the club in London. So when we moved to Singapore and they had this opportunity to work on a new club, of course, I was very happy to take the opportunity. And so I just started out working with them for just one day a week. And then it built up. into the role I have now.
Speaker #0
Okay. And so what was this day a week? It was just basically like contributing to opening the club?
Speaker #1
It was really, we did a weekly tour of the site. So when we first started operating in Singapore, we had the premises, which was this beautiful penthouse of a... a skyscraper but it was empty there was nothing literally just bare concrete and we would take people around with a glass of champagne and show them the site and say okay this is going to be the restaurant this will be the event space we have the wine tower we've got this terrace outside and we would sell the dream of the club to prospective members and so every week i was meeting 20 or 30 people and showing them around. And I could tell them my experience of the club in London and I could tell them, you know, my story about wine. So we started to build this community and then we had COVID. And so what happened then was everything went online, as you know. So we just started doing webinars and we would send wine to our, you know, contacts and our friends who had met. And every week we'd sit down and share a glass and I would be hosting either a winemaker or an expert talking about wine. And so it built up very gradually. But that, I think, worked in our favor because we were able to build a trust of these people. And then the club opened in 2022. And by that time, we had a full membership already. on the day that we opened. So it was a great way of... It's nice, yeah. Yeah, it's really great, you know. And ever since then, we've had this full membership.
Speaker #0
And so on your side, you've expanded from hosting these tastings, doing the tours and stuff, to a larger role that is head of wine. Yes. What does it look like?
Speaker #1
Well, I work with four departments, events, marketing, sommelier. and cellar. And my job is really to make sure that anywhere in the club that the wine proposition is top quality. So if it's buying, or if it's running an event, or if it's communication, writing a newsletter, I work with all of those teams. So last night, we did an event here in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Club, and I was working with a team here. And I was hosting the event. And, you know, it's just trying to ensure that that quality level is uncompromising.
Speaker #0
And so you do that for Southeast Asia? Yes.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And also for Australia. So we have this club coming in Melbourne. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Okay. So here, for example, in Hong Kong, you have a very good selection of Chinese wines. Yeah. It was something that we noticed and we absolutely liked the day we came. Is it the same in all clubs or you try to have different selections and different atmospheres?
Speaker #1
We have. So in the London club and the Singapore club, and also to a certain extent, the club in Verbier in Switzerland, we have a very big range of wine by the glass. So in Singapore and London, we have 1000 wines by the glass and it's all done by Coravan and it's a huge range. So of course, we have all of the classics from Burgundy and Bordeaux and Loire and Rhone and everywhere. But we also have much less well-known wines like Chinese wines, but also we have a wine from Thailand. We have wine from Uruguay, Greece, Turkey, anywhere, because we want to try and represent the whole world of wine. Here in Hong Kong, we've got these Chinese wines here. Right now we have 67 wines by the glass, all Chinese. Before this, we had all Pinot Noir. Before that, we had all champagne. And the next phase will be all 2015. Because that's the 10th anniversary of the club. So we will have not just red wines, but we will have some interesting white wines from 2015. And of course, champagnes from 2015. So each time here, we have a very specific theme, but it's like a small...
Speaker #0
proportion of what the club offers overall when when we're working at the full scale and so here here in hong kong you're doing even based uh maybe not even based but like seasonal selection of wine that you're changing like that yeah it's amazing yeah exactly okay i thought it was like permanent no we've we've we we extended this chinese wine wall because it
Speaker #1
was so popular um so normally we change every three months. But I think we've run this for six months now.
Speaker #0
Okay, wow.
Speaker #1
And so we really wanted to support Chinese wine because it's so rare and interesting, you know, to the wider world. They don't really know much about it. And then, yeah, like I said, the next themes, who knows, after the 2015s, we'll keep on changing things.
Speaker #0
We'll be there for the 2015 for sure. It could be good,
Speaker #1
that one.
Speaker #0
It was a very nice vintage in a lot of places in the world. Exactly. So it's great to rediscover it. And actually, so we started this podcast in 2018, 2019. so I think that 2015 was among the first vintages that we had the opportunity to taste with the the winemakers you know like going to the estates and discussing with them we call it like i have good memories of us in bordeaux at chateau de ferrand for example in saint-emilion and just like tasting the 2015 i think we have a magnum of 2015 from ferrand in france yeah so you know it's it's good memories for us um so 67 pole mall we haven't actually described what is 67 we entered into your role and what you're doing but it's basically a members club in plenty of cities so I know Bordeaux, London Singapore Hong Kong you've mentioned Verbier yes you told me that Melbourne was opening soon yes
Speaker #1
Shanghai as well Shanghai as well and then Bone also no? Bone is coming yes Bone is coming as well that will be a small club but yes we have a property there and in future there will be more sites being announced so they're not official yet they're mostly in asia uh and they're in the kind of cities that you would expect so the big cities the big international cities so there are plans for quite a few more coming nice uh can't
Speaker #0
wait to travel to china and go discover them it's always a always a good place so it's a members club uh so you have to sign up it's a yearly fee or something like that yeah yeah And then you can come basically.
Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. So the advantage for a wine lover is firstly that you get access to this incredible range of wine. So 1,000 by the glass, but we have something like 5,000 by the bottle. We have a great events program. So we're doing winemaker masterclasses, dinners two or three times every week. And again, the range is everything from really high end, super premium Bordeaux and Burgundy and champagne through to. new discoveries from Australia or South Africa. So we really try and cover everything. But another important point is that the wine list is very competitively priced. So you're paying around half what you would pay in a good restaurant or a good hotel. So the whole idea of paying a membership fee is that you get access to this discounted wine.
Speaker #0
Yeah, that's what I saw when I entered here a bit earlier is that you have, so I don't know if you see it on camera, but there are some sparkling wine. I was super impressed by the price. Yes, exactly. Like it's 140, so basically 15 euros.
Speaker #1
and i'm like exactly that is i mean it is it's encouraging people to experiment and when the cost is very reasonable and they think okay i'll just try this because you know, it's very affordable. And then they find they love it and then they try something else. And, you know, our sommeliers are always very happy to recommend something different and unusual. So it's a good relationship.
Speaker #0
And so you were a member of this club when you were in London. And then so you started working for this club.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Are there, like, did you notice difference between what you expected and what you see between, like, did you have expectations when you started to work with them?
Speaker #1
Um... The answer is yes and no. It was, I had no idea about the realities of the business side. And that has been so interesting. Working with the profit and loss, the kind of logistics, all of the nuts and bolts that make a hospitality business work. I had no idea. Behind the scenes, there's so much more going on than most people realize. You know, you go into the club, you go into any restaurant, you see this beautiful room. Somebody greets you, you sit down, you have a nice meal. And then you don't realize that behind the scenes, there's all of this stuff happening. So that was really interesting. But the fundamental...
Speaker #0
motivation of the club which is to share great wine with great people that's the same in front of house or in back of house and so long as that stays central to the club you know that's what makes it such a great place to work such a great place to be a member um
Speaker #1
so you've also wrote this book wine in the food of uh of asia yeah How did you start it? It was just like you were passionate about this and you're like, okay, let's...
Speaker #0
Well, not really, honestly. I'd never written a book and I also never really written about food and wine matching of any kind. So when the founder of the club, Grant, asked me to write a book, he said, you know, you should... think about doing Asian food. And actually, that was something I knew nothing about. So I was a little bit worried. And it was turned out to be the perfect subject because I'm not an expert. And I was able to learn as I wrote the book. So I was able to explain things from the beginning. And I still don't think I'm an expert. But this book represents a very honest reflection of the research that I did. And I really did try hundreds of combinations. And we did everything at the club in Singapore. So we would put 10 wines on the table, and then we would prepare maybe six or seven dishes. And they were very different. So we'd have some Indian cuisine, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian. And I'd be trying like, I'm going to try a Viognier with this one. Okay, it doesn't work. Now I'll try it with this one. Oh no, maybe I'll try the Sauvignon Blanc here. I mean, it was completely random, but I made a spreadsheet, this crazy, enormous spreadsheet, which it recorded all of my reactions. And then I started to see patterns. And so I started to figure out, okay, this style of wine goes well with this style of food. So I need to figure out why. I try it more times with different variations. So if it worked with Sauvignon Blanc, is it just Loire Sauvignon Blanc? Or does it also work with Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc? And does it work with Oaked Sauvignon Blanc? And I really did take it step by step like that. And the whole book from start to finish was a two-year project because it took me that long to work on how everything paired together. So when I... tell people about the book. The thing I can tell very honestly is that it's, I know that it works for me. These pairings are not theoretical. They have been tested and I've cooked the dishes at home and I've poured the wines and I've served them to friends and I can stand behind them and say, honestly, this works for me. I think I can explain why it works. And then I just leave it to you to decide if it's a good thing.
Speaker #1
for you personally or or not because not everybody has to agree i don't know if the if the process of writing this book looks like a dream or a nightmare yeah i had to i had to experience six different dishes with 20 different wines at the same time so i envy you at the same time like yeah but if you need to do that three times a week for two years it was a lot let me tell you that um i love the fact that it exists now i really i'm very proud of it and i love
Speaker #0
talking about it and showing it to people the writing process that was the nightmare part and and it really was very hard to to figure it out and also to explain it in in language that was clear and comprehensible and
Speaker #1
so basically for for this uh grant so the the founder of 67 had this id yes and he came to see you he said richard you're gonna do it exactly so i had no choice
Speaker #0
And I'm glad because I never would have, under my own initiative, I never would have thought of this. Yeah.
Speaker #1
You were saying, introducing this book, you were saying that you're not an expert. But there is one thing in your career that we didn't mention is that you have also became a master of wine. So a bit earlier, we talked about your wine education, like going through the WICT level. So you told me you graduated from WICT 3 in like 2007 or 9, something like that. Yeah. You told me. But a bit before, you told me that you became a Master of Wine way after that.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
So first, how do you decide to start wanting to go for Master of Wine?
Speaker #0
Well, the honest answer is that... When I came back to the UK after Australia, and I'd started this writing career, and I started to meet some other wine writers that were around my age, and one of them in particular had just signed up for the MW course. And until that point, I had zero intention of ever studying for the Master of Wine. To me, it was something impossible. But when I realized that... I was working alongside these kind of people that would have the, you know, the option to do this. I realized I should probably think about it. So then actually the following year I signed up and the person that I was kind of inspired by, actually, she became a master of wine as well. She's called Rebecca Gibb. She's based in the UK and she's a wine writer. and She became a master of wine just a few years before me. So I have to give her the credit for inspiring me to take the jump. It took a long time because, well, you know, it takes a long time. It took me six years. And when I started on the course, you're right, that it'd been a long time since I'd taken my WSET. So my knowledge was actually not great. I had to work very hard to reach the standard that... you needed to be at but um it was also the best most worthwhile thing i've done in terms of developing my career for sure okay so now i'm worried because we start to interview several master of wine and having them around me so yeah
Speaker #1
it's gonna be you next yeah you should sign up for sure why not yeah because uh six years is a long commitment and it's really hard but One day, maybe, we'd probably love to, but it's a lot of things to discover. Can you tell us a bit more about, so basically, Master of Wine, you need to know everything about how wine is produced around the world.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and that's a key point, what you just said, around the world. You need to be able to talk about all the areas of wine on a global scale. So you have a paper on viticulture, and you need to reference viticulture in very classic regions like Bordeaux, but also in emerging regions like Hebei in China or South Africa or anywhere. And to have that global perspective is very important. But you also need to have the same global perspective for winemaking, for business, for contemporary issues, which means anything that is sort of current, like... A lot of people right now, they're talking about drinking in moderation and avoiding alcohol. And so having a good understanding of all of those things is really vital to being able to pass the exams.
Speaker #1
So it's definitely a lot of work and very large commitment before doing that. And so for you, you said it changed a lot of things in your career.
Speaker #0
It did, yeah. it was Firstly, it gave me the confidence because, you know, when you get that degree, you're in a very small group of people globally and you're in a really great network. So not only do you get great opportunities for work, but you can say to people, look, you know, I have the credibility. I've been through this process. I've spent the time working on it. And it really, you know, it's worth something. So you're able to, you know, charge more. You know, frankly, you are able to increase your earnings because you have a value that is intrinsic to the MW. So yeah, in terms of my career progression, when I passed that exam, it really opened up a big new opportunity.
Speaker #1
You talked about Hubei just before. I think it's a good transition to the wine we are tasting.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
Whole different topic. but so We had the opportunity to just take a glass while recording this podcast. And we had this wine.
Speaker #0
Yes, which is a Tempranillo by a producer called Chapter and Verse. It's 2015 vintage. And actually, something I've, because I've been tasting a lot of Chinese wines recently, and something I've really been pleased to find is that there are some good examples of how well these wines are maturing. And I think this tastes like a classic Tempranillo with bottle age. you know The question is, does it taste Chinese? I don't know. I mean, if I tasted this blind... I would never guess Chinese spontaneously. I think it has the classic characteristics of Tempranillo. And I think it has a sort of fruit ripeness that I would associate with non-European countries. But would I get to China? I have no idea. But it's great winemaking. It's beautifully balanced and it's developing well. And yeah, it's a lovely wine.
Speaker #1
Very lovely. And, you know, so for us, we are discovering Chinese wines. We really wanted to go to tasting, go in China, discover this place. And what I noticed is that for a lot of wines, I think that tasting blind, I can't tell if it's from China or somewhere else.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
But I have never, well, of course, there are some wines I don't like, but most of the times it's technically very, very well done. You know, like it's very... It's actually very good wines. It's like a good Tom Franilo. It's what you would expect from a bottle-aged 2015 Tom Franilo. It's absolutely nice. And so this step is granted, I think, for China now. They are producing very good wines to the international standard of wine. Now the question is, can you do wines that express something differently? Yes. You know, like having your... own identity yeah and i feel like they start to to want to do this but it's the next step in every vineyard it's like first you want to master it then you want to express something so it's like yeah it's like artist you know picasso started by painting
Speaker #0
very conventional things and then he evolved so yeah that's a good that's a good analogy there and we are starting to see some the best producers who are exploring their terroir and making smaller parcels, making micro vinifications, trying to tell the story of their place, not just a variety. And it takes a long time. I think the thing that is most frustrating about developing a wine identity is that the one thing you cannot control is time. And that means time in the bottle for it to mature, but also time for the vines to grow maturity. And also time for you to understand what you can do. A lot of the time when people are starting out in vineyards, they just try anything. You know, you plant Cabernet and Riesling next to each other. And then you figure out that one is successful and one you need to change. And then you realize that your oak regime is too powerful. and it You can only make wine once a year. And so I think it takes an entire lifetime before you really understand. And yeah, at least, right? And then you have hope that your kids will continue. Yeah. So I think that's also why I never wanted to be a winemaker. I don't have the patience to see that process through.
Speaker #1
Yeah, it's a bit of my worry as well. You know, Burgundy took more than 1000 years to look like what it looks like now. So I'm like... I won't have the opportunity to witness that from my living, but it's still a good moment to discover Chinese wines because if you had the opportunity to be there at the start of Burgundy, then it would have been fun to have recordings and places you've been to. So that's fun. Is there anything we haven't talked about? Trying to look into that. I think the book, we've covered it. Carrier is done. Chinese wines we talked about it Master of Wine 67 we talked about it Genesis Robinson we talked about it so it's a we've covered plenty of aspects but are there anything you're thinking about that we didn't cover no I think we've covered a lot there and yeah
Speaker #0
the book the wine yeah we've ticked all the boxes
Speaker #1
I think it's okay I have three last questions that are pretty traditional in this podcast.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
The first one is, do you have a book recommendation about wine? So obviously we recommend you Wine and the Food of Asia. Thank you. Link in description.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
Do you have any other books you would recommend?
Speaker #0
Yeah. So I've just started reading a book called One in a Billion, which is a memoir of Sonal Holland MW, who's India's first master of wine. And she's also a friend. so I helped her with her studies and we've traveled together and we collaborate on different projects. And it's... Her story of how she came from a very humble background in India and worked her way up through the wine industry from nothing. And, you know, her story is really breathtaking. You know, the likelihood of her achieving what she's achieved is so low. And she's worked so hard and achieved so much. You know, she now is a huge social media presence. She has over a million followers on Instagram. She's really... driving wine appreciation in India. And so it's a fascinating story. I think it's very interesting to anybody that loves wine. I think it's super interesting to anyone who's interested in Asia and how wine is working in Asia. But I also think it's a very human story. So I think for people that maybe don't even particularly drink wine very much, they're going to find something in there that is a really interesting reflection of one person just being very determined and very uh
Speaker #1
very ambitious yeah i will uh i will definitely read the book um i understood the the title after you you described yeah this but yeah when you are the only master of wine in a country of 1.3 billion exactly yeah it's crazy and um yeah i think that uh the willingness to go through the wine industry,
Speaker #0
which
Speaker #1
I guess is not that present in India.
Speaker #0
No.
Speaker #1
To like... get out of your situation and achieve something yeah is because you can you can be like okay maybe automotive industry is a bit more likely for you to you know uh have a certain range of income but yeah wine industry is way more i guess unsure in in india so in any case i'd be glad to to read the book um do you have a recent wine tasting that you loved yeah it was a really good wine tasting and the wines were really good.
Speaker #0
And the reason I loved it actually was because of the conversation. This comes back to almost what we were saying at the beginning. So the producer is called Hundred Hills. They're in Oxfordshire in England and they make great English sparkling wine. I'd never met the owner before and I didn't really know the brand. And we tasted the wines and the wines were very good. And we went around the vineyard and it's very beautiful, which, you know, happens a lot. You know, if you're lucky, yeah, you get to visit these places and they're all... they're all great what i really enjoyed is when we sat down and we talked about the business side and we talked about the reality of branding and profit margins and marketing support and distribution and so many producers really don't understand how the reality works in the wine industry and so this was a conversation that was that was very honest it was really useful for me to hear it from a producer's perspective? And so I very much valued that. And like I said, of course, the wines were fantastic. So it was a range of wines with some with very long Lee's age, some Blanc de Noir, some Blanc de Blanc. So it was good to see, you know, he was making these very different expressions. But they were all there for good commercial reasons. You know, they all had a route to market. They all existed, not just because they were great wines, but because they're a good business.
Speaker #1
it's a so so First, thank you for the recommendation. We'll definitely try to find some bottles. And it's also something I witnessed in China. During the tasting we had, the estate had a Blanc de Noir. So still wine, but Blanc de Noir. Okay. And we're like, oh, so you always wanted to do a Blanc de Noir and everything. And they were like, no, but the demand right now for white wine is greater. And we don't have time to plant. Yeah. You know. So we just. do the winemaking in Blanc de Noir and then it's okay and it's fascinating because I think it's definitely not the type of discussions I would have in France with someone producing Blanc de Noir you know you'd be like no it's deeply rooted in the history of my family and whatever yeah and these guys were super pragmatic they were like you know markets want white wine this is a way for me to offer white wine
Speaker #0
I do this and we see so well I'll tell you one more tasting actually that I had recently that was very interesting for similar reasons. was the Chardonnay from Fleur de Bois in La Lande Pomerant. And it's classified as just a Vendor. In fact, no, it's not a Vendor France. It's a Vendor Paid Atlantique. And it's the first Chardonnay from Bordeaux I ever tasted. And it's good. You know, it's great. It tastes like a good village level Burgundy. And the fact that they're trying this new variety for Bordeaux. And this new approach, selling a white wine that is non-native. to Bordeaux region is I think a great innovation especially for France you know it's a big risk doing something like that but it's been successful so they were saying that you know they have three hectares right now but they're going to be top grafting some of their Merlot I think over to Chardonnay because they want to increase the sales of their white wine so that's that's a big change and you know when they're making good wine and if they have demand for it then that's great idea.
Speaker #1
definitely is it so it's fleur de bois fleur de bois So we'll also try to find this. We have good connections in Bordeaux now. So we'll try to find this. Thank you very much for this, Richard. Last question is, who is the next person I should interview?
Speaker #0
Well, this is a very apposite moment because I was just having lunch with him. Eddie McDougall is an Australian winemaker, entrepreneur, founder of the Wynn. signature China Wine Awards, who we've worked with at 67 Palmel. He's just launched a range of his own wines called E.J. McDougall, which are Australian. There's a Margaret River Chardonnay and a McLaren Vale Shiraz and a Grenache and so on. And he has got such a good, balanced perspective of the wine industry. It's really interesting to talk to him because he understands production. He understands marketing distribution. He understands retail. And he was also early in his career, he had a TV show. And so he was very like a very early kind of media personality where he was traveling around the world. It was called The Flying Winemaker and sort of giving these wine advice. He's also just such a lovely, genuine guy. He's got a fascinating story and I think he'd be a good person to talk to.
Speaker #1
Absolutely. Thank you very much for this recommendation. We'll try to catch him if he's in Hong Kong. We'll definitely try to catch him in the next few days. Richard, thank you very much for all this. It was a really nice conversation. Thank you very much for opening up about your career and what you did so far. Can't wait to do the next episode in 20 years. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Well, who knows where we're going to be by then. But yeah, it would be my pleasure.
Speaker #1
For sure. What is true is that it was a very nice moment for me. I hope that you guys enjoyed this moment as well. If you enjoyed it, please share it to at least two persons. Send it to email, WhatsApp, I don't know what, Instagram, whatever. Richard, thanks again and see you next time.
Speaker #0
My pleasure. Thanks,
Speaker #1
Antoine. Perfect.
Speaker #0
All good?

About Wine Makers Show: the wine podcast

Join us on Wine Makers Show, the podcast that uncorks the world of wine! Hosted by Antoine, a passionate entrepreneur and wine enthusiast, this show dives deep into the stories, expertise, and journeys of the people who make wine extraordinary—winemakers, sommeliers, vintners, and industry trailblazers.

What to Expect

In-Depth Interviews: Hear from top figures in the wine world, from renowned vintners to unsung heroes, as they share their experiences, challenges, and secrets to success.
Club Episodes: Explore specific wine topics, from production techniques to tasting tips, in focused, occasional deep dives.
A Journey of Discovery: Whether you're a novice or a connoisseur, we break down the complexities of wine to make it accessible and engaging.

Why Listen?

Wine Makers Show is your gateway to understanding wine like never before. With a focus on storytelling and sharing, Antoine brings you closer to the heart of the wine industry, one conversation at a time. Expect authentic discussions, insider knowledge, and a celebration of the craft and culture of wine.

Connect with Us

Visit winemakersshow.com to get in touch or suggest a guest.
Email Antoine directly at winemakersshow@gmail.com.
Follow the journey on Instagram: @winemakersshow
Join the Academy and learn everything about wine

Tune in to Wine Makers Show and sip on the stories behind every bottle!

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About Wine Makers Show: the wine podcast

What to Expect

In-Depth Interviews: Hear from top figures in the wine world, from renowned vintners to unsung heroes, as they share their experiences, challenges, and secrets to success.
Club Episodes: Explore specific wine topics, from production techniques to tasting tips, in focused, occasional deep dives.
A Journey of Discovery: Whether you're a novice or a connoisseur, we break down the complexities of wine to make it accessible and engaging.

Why Listen?

Connect with Us

Visit winemakersshow.com to get in touch or suggest a guest.
Email Antoine directly at winemakersshow@gmail.com.
Follow the journey on Instagram: @winemakersshow
Join the Academy and learn everything about wine

Tune in to Wine Makers Show and sip on the stories behind every bottle!

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

Discover how Richard Hemming went from a student with zero wine knowledge to a Master of Wine, a writer for Jancis Robinson, and now Head of Wine for 67 Pall Mall Asia.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 🎁 GIFTS 🎁 ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

📚 One In a Billion: Becoming India’s First Master of Wine, by Sonal C. Holland MW, India’s first Master of Wine: a deeply inspiring memoir about determination, passion, and overcoming the odds

📚 Wine & The Food of Asia, by Richard Hemming: explores how to successfully pair wines with the rich diversity of Asian cuisines, from Indian to Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Chinese and more

🍷 Discover the 67 Pall Mall universe

🤓 Join the Academy and learn all you need to know about wine

🎁 Get your wine essentials on our shop: a curated selection of wine glasses, posters and much more

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⭐️ ABOUT ⭐️ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

ALCOHOL ABUSE IS DANGEROUS FOUR YOUR HEALTH. CONSUME IN MODERATION.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi, Richard.
Speaker #1
Hi.
Speaker #0
Thank you very much for having us at 67 Pall Mall on Hollywood in Hong Kong. So it's actually the second time we start this recording, but I didn't have the answer to the first question. We had a machine at the back just making some terrible noise. So we decided to start again. I was saying thank you very much for having us. You're the head of wine for 67 Pall Mall. You're a master of wine. You've recently published a book about wine and the food of Asia.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Among plenty of other things, I'm sure, that we'll dig into it. My first question is always the same. Can you start by introducing yourself?
Speaker #1
Sure. So my name is Richard Hemming, and I am a master of wine. As you said, I've been a master of wine since 2015, but I started my wine career in 2001, which was in London working for a retailer called Majestic. and before that I had no wine knowledge but... After I started with them, I went through the WSET and then I left them in 2007, started working in Australia. And from there, I started writing for Jancis Robinson's website. And then fast forward to 2019 and I relocated to Singapore, which is where I'm based now, as head of Wine Asia for 67 Pal Mal, but also still working for Jancis. and doing a few other things too.
Speaker #0
What made you decide to go into this first wine retailer, wine shop? How did you... Was it just like, okay, there is light, I need a job, let's go for it?
Speaker #1
Yeah, pretty much like that. You know, I was studying in Leeds University. And I had a degree in English, but I didn't want to be a... English teacher or anything like that. So I was looking for a job and they were advertising in the back of the student newspaper for this wine shop called Majestic Wine. So I applied for the job and that was it. I had no idea about wine, really. I drank the cheapest wine that they were selling in the supermarkets back then. I remember it was a Spanish wine and it was red, but that was it. I had nothing, no knowledge at all. And so it was really just the fact that it was a good career it looked like they had a scheme to promote their trainees so that you could move up quickly and you could be a manager of a shop so that was why and what um like
Speaker #0
before started this job maybe it's a difficult question because it may be a bit harder to remember now but when you started a job did you add in mind something that you were sure was true for the wine industry or for the wine people and actually turned out to be wrong or the other way around that's like a certitude that you had and actually after a few days of working you're like yeah oh that's a good question no i i assumed when i started that wine
Speaker #1
was this very um specialized subject that you had to learn a lot about before you could enjoy it and then ironically enough when i learned a lot about it I understood how, you know, really it should just be accessible. It should just be a daily pleasure that you enjoy with meals, that you share a glass with friends. But the culture in the UK was never really like that. You know, in France and in mainland Europe, the culture of just opening a bottle with your family on a daily basis, I think, is much more normal. And in the family I grew up in, you know, wine was something very special. You would only have it.
Speaker #0
On Sunday, isn't that?
Speaker #1
For Sunday lunch. And my dad would buy a bottle. He had no idea what he was buying, but he liked the idea of buying a bottle of wine and having a glass with Sunday roast. And so I always viewed it as this very specialized subject. And then, like I said, I came to understand that really the true pleasure of wine is that it just brings people together to share a glass, talk, have some good food. and you don't need to know what it is so long as you're enjoying it and sharing it with people. I think that's the main power that wine has.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it definitely gathers people and makes you more open to communicate. I don't know, it must be rooted in our DNA or historic things, but it's funny that you say that. In the podcast, we had the opportunity to interview Pierre Lurton from Cheval Blanc and Ikem. And we were talking, like, his wines are absolutely exceptional among the top wines in the world. And we were talking about how... still simple the like the best moments you can have with these wines are not in like a you know white napkin super classifying it's just like opening a bottle on a on a friday evening with your wife and a few friends yeah and then you just uh you just enjoy it yeah and with simple dishes and things like that it makes the the whole difference so it's so true and and when And sometimes when I've experienced some of the most...
Speaker #1
prestigious bottles you know the very fancy most expensive whether it's burgundy or nappa or anything often i experience those as a professional in a professional context so at a tasting you know it's very clinical and you're taking detailed tasting notes and everybody's concentrating and actually you don't really have much fun you don't really enjoy the wine as it's intended but you can have a very humble wine in a great setting with people that you love and that brings it alive you know and that context is so important and i think it's one of the things that's easy to forget when people become obsessed with particular labels or you know collecting certain vintages they can forget that actually you know it's not really about what's inside the bottle it's what experience you're having outside the bottle yeah
Speaker #0
And it's like one of the good ways to reduce that is to try to taste blindly almost everything, you know. Yeah. And just see if you enjoy it or not. That type of thing makes the game way more fun, you know. Yes. Just with friends, everyone brings a bottle, you don't know what you're drinking. And then suddenly you realize that you like certain things that you thought were absolutely horrible the other way around. Yeah. So it's fun. So how long do you work at this first experience in the UK?
Speaker #1
It was six years. And because I had no wine knowledge when I started, during that time, I did all of the WSET qualifications. So I took the diploma, I think, in 2005. And then I left the company in 2007.
Speaker #0
Okay. And then, so you leave this company, you told me you were going to Australia. Is it because you had an opportunity there or you had no idea and just took a plane?
Speaker #1
A bit of both. I had an opportunity to do vintage in McLaren Vale. in 2008. So I went over to Australia in 2007 and I was 29 years old at the time. And that was my last chance to get a holiday working visa. So I worked, I could work there for one year and you could only stay in a job for six months. So I landed in Sydney and I got a job at a wine shop. And then I went to McLaren Vale in early 2008 to do vintage there.
Speaker #0
And what did you experience? So it was your first time in the vineyard?
Speaker #1
Yeah. And actually, most of my time I was in the winery. They made a lot of Shiraz. And I was mostly doing pump overs. So it's very physical. It was an extremely hot vintage, like even more hot than South Australia is normally. So I was just carting all of these hoses around and setting up. pump overs and it was it was a great learning experience like actually being able to understand how all of these things work in practice fantastic learning experience i've got to say it put me off making wine for life like i'm glad i'd done it once but i don't really want to do it again it's not it's not the thing that makes me excited um i love visiting and i love talking to people and tasting the wine of course but physically making the wine no that's not for me
Speaker #0
And do you think that seeing that, did it change your perception of selling wines, sharing wines? You know, like, were you realizing that in this first job in the UK, you were missing something?
Speaker #1
Yes. Well, it was more that having this perspective on the inside of how wine is made allowed me to write a diary of my experiences. which is how I got onto jantisrobinson.com. So I never planned it that way, but it was seeing the inside of the reality of production. And I wrote about it every week. I was writing a kind of report and it was sort of incognito. So I wasn't naming the producer. And I was able to be quite honest about everything that was going on. You know, there was a few practices that were a little bit hidden you know watering down the the the ferments that kind of thing so it was very honest and i think a lot of people appreciated the fact that i was able to just be truthful. So that was how I ended up going into the communication side of the wine industry. So it wasn't so much that, you know, I had an intention or that I was expecting to get a certain experience, but it was very fortunate that I managed to have this opportunity to start writing. And then that took me into my next phase.
Speaker #0
Which was next phase still Australia, because you stayed longer than a year, actually.
Speaker #1
uh no actually i know so i came back to london later that year um and then i met with uh jancis who you know she'd been very very kind and had published these articles but i'd never met her in person and this was before zoom calls right so we hadn't even met online we just emailed and she said that she was happy for me to continue writing for the website and so that was yeah 2008 and ever since then i've been writing for the site on a regular basis.
Speaker #0
And when you started writing about this experience in Australia, were you already publishing yourself online? Or you were sending it to Gen 6 and a few people?
Speaker #1
Yes, exactly that. It's funny because back then, this was before Twitter, before Instagram.
Speaker #0
You were doing a newsletter.
Speaker #1
Not even that. You know what I was doing? I was writing articles. and then just saving them as Word documents on my computer. I never did anything with them, except I entered this competition, which was run in the UK, and it was for young wine writers. And I never actually won, but I came second. And I think the winner got a contract to write for a magazine, but the second place got nothing. I was so close. And that's why I thought, well, okay, I must be okay at writing. So then I just decided to send the article that I had written to Jancis Robinson, but also to a few other people. And I just said, do whatever you want. Yeah, is this any good? Can you help? And it was Jancis that got back to me and said, well, yeah, why don't we figure something out?
Speaker #0
And so it started like that and you continued.
Speaker #1
ever ever since writing and being with her yeah and i think a lot of people work like that in wine um you because it's a it's an it's an industry that brings people together and it's very hospitable and it's very communal and so you get these opportunities that you never expected and then you just kind of follow them and see where they go and you know i never would have predicted i would come to Singapore. I never would have predicted I would be doing, you know, writing books and working in membership clubs. But it all happened one thing after the other.
Speaker #0
How did you, what did you notice in wine media? So it's been like 10 years you've been writing about wine and like gravitating around this place. What changes have you seen in the wine media?
Speaker #1
Well, I've been... I think both lucky and in a way unlucky. When I started out 2008, my ambition was to get a newspaper column because at the time that was the best way of getting your name out there. And it's still, obviously it would be a great, very prestigious thing to have, but nowadays, really there's so few good... newspaper columns available because the media landscape has changed completely. So I've been unfortunate in that way because a lot of the money in writing has disappeared. You know, there's no kind of good way to make a profit in print media anymore, really. And even online, if you want to earn a living, you're probably having to do sponsorship deals or advertising. It's very hard to get. readers to actually pay you their own money to take your content. I mean, it's just normal now. So that perhaps was kind of unlucky timing. But then, of course, what happened in its place is social media has been the biggest change. And I was on Twitter for quite a long time, Instagram, not so much, but all of those platforms for communication. sub stack is something that i'm now doing uh quite a lot and i'm really enjoying that and actually that is a way that you can get people to pay you you know for your content and i just feel like it's a really interesting So the dynamic has shifted a lot. It's much easier now to get anybody can go online and publish themselves. And that's quite amazing when you think about it. You know, 20 years ago, that was impossible. You could have a blog. But really, it was very different to today. So anybody can do it. As a result, there's a lot of competition. There's a lot of voices out there. It's hard to cut through the noise. And it's also hard to make an income. But in terms of, you know, being able to speak directly to your audience, I mean, there's nothing better. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So, by the way, this podcast is not sponsored or advertised. So you've heard the return of the state to reach out to me. No, but I guess Substack or the renewal of newsletter as we now know it, it's kind of the same as being. in a good column in a good newspaper yeah because it's the same for me it's kind of the same atmosphere that you could have maybe 20 30 40 years ago when you were reading a newspaper and there weren't just advertisement everywhere and and you know it's often well written it often goes in depth in a topic and like it's just at least the the sub stack i'm following it's always I feel very good quality writing about things that are really interesting to me. And so for me, it's really the equivalent of being in a good newspaper.
Speaker #1
Well, that's nice to hear because I feel the same. And I actually follow more non-wine writers. So I follow some people who write about entertainment and culture. And I don't... buy any newspapers now you know it's a shame because i love the idea of newspapers but the convenience of getting an emailed report from your favorite writers you know once a week or once a month is just fantastic um and what i think will be a big question is how sustainable is it for individuals to subscribe to multiple substacks you know if you have 10 substacks that you pay money for that you're paying quite a lot yeah it starts to be a lot and i think maybe we'll see some consolidation there um i saw somebody actually writing about this on substack saying that they wish that you could pay substack a monthly fee and
Speaker #0
that each month you could change who you subscribe to yeah and then five subscription and yeah they share money and actually i really see the point of that
Speaker #1
So I think we're going to see more changes in that field.
Speaker #0
Yeah, for sure. Because there is no newsletter super expensive, but it can be like three, four US per month. But if you do that like 10 times, you end up spending 50, 60, even 100 US per month on newsletter, which is a lot. Okay, so you've continued writing like that. Back to London. you're working with with Genesis Robinson and so then you have the opportunity to go to Singapore is it with 67 or still with with Genesis no it was neither actually so it was
Speaker #1
2018 and when the Brexit vote came my wife and I just decided that we wanted to move and we were we had no idea where so we just started looking My wife at the time was a head teacher of a primary school. So we knew that we could go anywhere that has international schools. And we found a few different options, but the best one was in Singapore. And I'd been to Singapore once and I thought, okay, well, seems great. So she applied for the job. She got the job. Within less than one year, we'd moved, relocated. And we had honestly no intention of doing it before. So it happened very quick. At the same time, by sheer coincidence, 67 Palmal was starting to develop a club in Singapore. And I was a member of the club in London. So when we moved to Singapore and they had this opportunity to work on a new club, of course, I was very happy to take the opportunity. And so I just started out working with them for just one day a week. And then it built up. into the role I have now.
Speaker #0
Okay. And so what was this day a week? It was just basically like contributing to opening the club?
Speaker #1
It was really, we did a weekly tour of the site. So when we first started operating in Singapore, we had the premises, which was this beautiful penthouse of a... a skyscraper but it was empty there was nothing literally just bare concrete and we would take people around with a glass of champagne and show them the site and say okay this is going to be the restaurant this will be the event space we have the wine tower we've got this terrace outside and we would sell the dream of the club to prospective members and so every week i was meeting 20 or 30 people and showing them around. And I could tell them my experience of the club in London and I could tell them, you know, my story about wine. So we started to build this community and then we had COVID. And so what happened then was everything went online, as you know. So we just started doing webinars and we would send wine to our, you know, contacts and our friends who had met. And every week we'd sit down and share a glass and I would be hosting either a winemaker or an expert talking about wine. And so it built up very gradually. But that, I think, worked in our favor because we were able to build a trust of these people. And then the club opened in 2022. And by that time, we had a full membership already. on the day that we opened. So it was a great way of... It's nice, yeah. Yeah, it's really great, you know. And ever since then, we've had this full membership.
Speaker #0
And so on your side, you've expanded from hosting these tastings, doing the tours and stuff, to a larger role that is head of wine. Yes. What does it look like?
Speaker #1
Well, I work with four departments, events, marketing, sommelier. and cellar. And my job is really to make sure that anywhere in the club that the wine proposition is top quality. So if it's buying, or if it's running an event, or if it's communication, writing a newsletter, I work with all of those teams. So last night, we did an event here in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Club, and I was working with a team here. And I was hosting the event. And, you know, it's just trying to ensure that that quality level is uncompromising.
Speaker #0
And so you do that for Southeast Asia? Yes.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And also for Australia. So we have this club coming in Melbourne. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Okay. So here, for example, in Hong Kong, you have a very good selection of Chinese wines. Yeah. It was something that we noticed and we absolutely liked the day we came. Is it the same in all clubs or you try to have different selections and different atmospheres?
Speaker #1
We have. So in the London club and the Singapore club, and also to a certain extent, the club in Verbier in Switzerland, we have a very big range of wine by the glass. So in Singapore and London, we have 1000 wines by the glass and it's all done by Coravan and it's a huge range. So of course, we have all of the classics from Burgundy and Bordeaux and Loire and Rhone and everywhere. But we also have much less well-known wines like Chinese wines, but also we have a wine from Thailand. We have wine from Uruguay, Greece, Turkey, anywhere, because we want to try and represent the whole world of wine. Here in Hong Kong, we've got these Chinese wines here. Right now we have 67 wines by the glass, all Chinese. Before this, we had all Pinot Noir. Before that, we had all champagne. And the next phase will be all 2015. Because that's the 10th anniversary of the club. So we will have not just red wines, but we will have some interesting white wines from 2015. And of course, champagnes from 2015. So each time here, we have a very specific theme, but it's like a small...
Speaker #0
proportion of what the club offers overall when when we're working at the full scale and so here here in hong kong you're doing even based uh maybe not even based but like seasonal selection of wine that you're changing like that yeah it's amazing yeah exactly okay i thought it was like permanent no we've we've we we extended this chinese wine wall because it
Speaker #1
was so popular um so normally we change every three months. But I think we've run this for six months now.
Speaker #0
Okay, wow.
Speaker #1
And so we really wanted to support Chinese wine because it's so rare and interesting, you know, to the wider world. They don't really know much about it. And then, yeah, like I said, the next themes, who knows, after the 2015s, we'll keep on changing things.
Speaker #0
We'll be there for the 2015 for sure. It could be good,
Speaker #1
that one.
Speaker #0
It was a very nice vintage in a lot of places in the world. Exactly. So it's great to rediscover it. And actually, so we started this podcast in 2018, 2019. so I think that 2015 was among the first vintages that we had the opportunity to taste with the the winemakers you know like going to the estates and discussing with them we call it like i have good memories of us in bordeaux at chateau de ferrand for example in saint-emilion and just like tasting the 2015 i think we have a magnum of 2015 from ferrand in france yeah so you know it's it's good memories for us um so 67 pole mall we haven't actually described what is 67 we entered into your role and what you're doing but it's basically a members club in plenty of cities so I know Bordeaux, London Singapore Hong Kong you've mentioned Verbier yes you told me that Melbourne was opening soon yes
Speaker #1
Shanghai as well Shanghai as well and then Bone also no? Bone is coming yes Bone is coming as well that will be a small club but yes we have a property there and in future there will be more sites being announced so they're not official yet they're mostly in asia uh and they're in the kind of cities that you would expect so the big cities the big international cities so there are plans for quite a few more coming nice uh can't
Speaker #0
wait to travel to china and go discover them it's always a always a good place so it's a members club uh so you have to sign up it's a yearly fee or something like that yeah yeah And then you can come basically.
Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. So the advantage for a wine lover is firstly that you get access to this incredible range of wine. So 1,000 by the glass, but we have something like 5,000 by the bottle. We have a great events program. So we're doing winemaker masterclasses, dinners two or three times every week. And again, the range is everything from really high end, super premium Bordeaux and Burgundy and champagne through to. new discoveries from Australia or South Africa. So we really try and cover everything. But another important point is that the wine list is very competitively priced. So you're paying around half what you would pay in a good restaurant or a good hotel. So the whole idea of paying a membership fee is that you get access to this discounted wine.
Speaker #0
Yeah, that's what I saw when I entered here a bit earlier is that you have, so I don't know if you see it on camera, but there are some sparkling wine. I was super impressed by the price. Yes, exactly. Like it's 140, so basically 15 euros.
Speaker #1
and i'm like exactly that is i mean it is it's encouraging people to experiment and when the cost is very reasonable and they think okay i'll just try this because you know, it's very affordable. And then they find they love it and then they try something else. And, you know, our sommeliers are always very happy to recommend something different and unusual. So it's a good relationship.
Speaker #0
And so you were a member of this club when you were in London. And then so you started working for this club.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Are there, like, did you notice difference between what you expected and what you see between, like, did you have expectations when you started to work with them?
Speaker #1
Um... The answer is yes and no. It was, I had no idea about the realities of the business side. And that has been so interesting. Working with the profit and loss, the kind of logistics, all of the nuts and bolts that make a hospitality business work. I had no idea. Behind the scenes, there's so much more going on than most people realize. You know, you go into the club, you go into any restaurant, you see this beautiful room. Somebody greets you, you sit down, you have a nice meal. And then you don't realize that behind the scenes, there's all of this stuff happening. So that was really interesting. But the fundamental...
Speaker #0
motivation of the club which is to share great wine with great people that's the same in front of house or in back of house and so long as that stays central to the club you know that's what makes it such a great place to work such a great place to be a member um
Speaker #1
so you've also wrote this book wine in the food of uh of asia yeah How did you start it? It was just like you were passionate about this and you're like, okay, let's...
Speaker #0
Well, not really, honestly. I'd never written a book and I also never really written about food and wine matching of any kind. So when the founder of the club, Grant, asked me to write a book, he said, you know, you should... think about doing Asian food. And actually, that was something I knew nothing about. So I was a little bit worried. And it was turned out to be the perfect subject because I'm not an expert. And I was able to learn as I wrote the book. So I was able to explain things from the beginning. And I still don't think I'm an expert. But this book represents a very honest reflection of the research that I did. And I really did try hundreds of combinations. And we did everything at the club in Singapore. So we would put 10 wines on the table, and then we would prepare maybe six or seven dishes. And they were very different. So we'd have some Indian cuisine, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian. And I'd be trying like, I'm going to try a Viognier with this one. Okay, it doesn't work. Now I'll try it with this one. Oh no, maybe I'll try the Sauvignon Blanc here. I mean, it was completely random, but I made a spreadsheet, this crazy, enormous spreadsheet, which it recorded all of my reactions. And then I started to see patterns. And so I started to figure out, okay, this style of wine goes well with this style of food. So I need to figure out why. I try it more times with different variations. So if it worked with Sauvignon Blanc, is it just Loire Sauvignon Blanc? Or does it also work with Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc? And does it work with Oaked Sauvignon Blanc? And I really did take it step by step like that. And the whole book from start to finish was a two-year project because it took me that long to work on how everything paired together. So when I... tell people about the book. The thing I can tell very honestly is that it's, I know that it works for me. These pairings are not theoretical. They have been tested and I've cooked the dishes at home and I've poured the wines and I've served them to friends and I can stand behind them and say, honestly, this works for me. I think I can explain why it works. And then I just leave it to you to decide if it's a good thing.
Speaker #1
for you personally or or not because not everybody has to agree i don't know if the if the process of writing this book looks like a dream or a nightmare yeah i had to i had to experience six different dishes with 20 different wines at the same time so i envy you at the same time like yeah but if you need to do that three times a week for two years it was a lot let me tell you that um i love the fact that it exists now i really i'm very proud of it and i love
Speaker #0
talking about it and showing it to people the writing process that was the nightmare part and and it really was very hard to to figure it out and also to explain it in in language that was clear and comprehensible and
Speaker #1
so basically for for this uh grant so the the founder of 67 had this id yes and he came to see you he said richard you're gonna do it exactly so i had no choice
Speaker #0
And I'm glad because I never would have, under my own initiative, I never would have thought of this. Yeah.
Speaker #1
You were saying, introducing this book, you were saying that you're not an expert. But there is one thing in your career that we didn't mention is that you have also became a master of wine. So a bit earlier, we talked about your wine education, like going through the WICT level. So you told me you graduated from WICT 3 in like 2007 or 9, something like that. Yeah. You told me. But a bit before, you told me that you became a Master of Wine way after that.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
So first, how do you decide to start wanting to go for Master of Wine?
Speaker #0
Well, the honest answer is that... When I came back to the UK after Australia, and I'd started this writing career, and I started to meet some other wine writers that were around my age, and one of them in particular had just signed up for the MW course. And until that point, I had zero intention of ever studying for the Master of Wine. To me, it was something impossible. But when I realized that... I was working alongside these kind of people that would have the, you know, the option to do this. I realized I should probably think about it. So then actually the following year I signed up and the person that I was kind of inspired by, actually, she became a master of wine as well. She's called Rebecca Gibb. She's based in the UK and she's a wine writer. and She became a master of wine just a few years before me. So I have to give her the credit for inspiring me to take the jump. It took a long time because, well, you know, it takes a long time. It took me six years. And when I started on the course, you're right, that it'd been a long time since I'd taken my WSET. So my knowledge was actually not great. I had to work very hard to reach the standard that... you needed to be at but um it was also the best most worthwhile thing i've done in terms of developing my career for sure okay so now i'm worried because we start to interview several master of wine and having them around me so yeah
Speaker #1
it's gonna be you next yeah you should sign up for sure why not yeah because uh six years is a long commitment and it's really hard but One day, maybe, we'd probably love to, but it's a lot of things to discover. Can you tell us a bit more about, so basically, Master of Wine, you need to know everything about how wine is produced around the world.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and that's a key point, what you just said, around the world. You need to be able to talk about all the areas of wine on a global scale. So you have a paper on viticulture, and you need to reference viticulture in very classic regions like Bordeaux, but also in emerging regions like Hebei in China or South Africa or anywhere. And to have that global perspective is very important. But you also need to have the same global perspective for winemaking, for business, for contemporary issues, which means anything that is sort of current, like... A lot of people right now, they're talking about drinking in moderation and avoiding alcohol. And so having a good understanding of all of those things is really vital to being able to pass the exams.
Speaker #1
So it's definitely a lot of work and very large commitment before doing that. And so for you, you said it changed a lot of things in your career.
Speaker #0
It did, yeah. it was Firstly, it gave me the confidence because, you know, when you get that degree, you're in a very small group of people globally and you're in a really great network. So not only do you get great opportunities for work, but you can say to people, look, you know, I have the credibility. I've been through this process. I've spent the time working on it. And it really, you know, it's worth something. So you're able to, you know, charge more. You know, frankly, you are able to increase your earnings because you have a value that is intrinsic to the MW. So yeah, in terms of my career progression, when I passed that exam, it really opened up a big new opportunity.
Speaker #1
You talked about Hubei just before. I think it's a good transition to the wine we are tasting.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
Whole different topic. but so We had the opportunity to just take a glass while recording this podcast. And we had this wine.
Speaker #0
Yes, which is a Tempranillo by a producer called Chapter and Verse. It's 2015 vintage. And actually, something I've, because I've been tasting a lot of Chinese wines recently, and something I've really been pleased to find is that there are some good examples of how well these wines are maturing. And I think this tastes like a classic Tempranillo with bottle age. you know The question is, does it taste Chinese? I don't know. I mean, if I tasted this blind... I would never guess Chinese spontaneously. I think it has the classic characteristics of Tempranillo. And I think it has a sort of fruit ripeness that I would associate with non-European countries. But would I get to China? I have no idea. But it's great winemaking. It's beautifully balanced and it's developing well. And yeah, it's a lovely wine.
Speaker #1
Very lovely. And, you know, so for us, we are discovering Chinese wines. We really wanted to go to tasting, go in China, discover this place. And what I noticed is that for a lot of wines, I think that tasting blind, I can't tell if it's from China or somewhere else.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
But I have never, well, of course, there are some wines I don't like, but most of the times it's technically very, very well done. You know, like it's very... It's actually very good wines. It's like a good Tom Franilo. It's what you would expect from a bottle-aged 2015 Tom Franilo. It's absolutely nice. And so this step is granted, I think, for China now. They are producing very good wines to the international standard of wine. Now the question is, can you do wines that express something differently? Yes. You know, like having your... own identity yeah and i feel like they start to to want to do this but it's the next step in every vineyard it's like first you want to master it then you want to express something so it's like yeah it's like artist you know picasso started by painting
Speaker #0
very conventional things and then he evolved so yeah that's a good that's a good analogy there and we are starting to see some the best producers who are exploring their terroir and making smaller parcels, making micro vinifications, trying to tell the story of their place, not just a variety. And it takes a long time. I think the thing that is most frustrating about developing a wine identity is that the one thing you cannot control is time. And that means time in the bottle for it to mature, but also time for the vines to grow maturity. And also time for you to understand what you can do. A lot of the time when people are starting out in vineyards, they just try anything. You know, you plant Cabernet and Riesling next to each other. And then you figure out that one is successful and one you need to change. And then you realize that your oak regime is too powerful. and it You can only make wine once a year. And so I think it takes an entire lifetime before you really understand. And yeah, at least, right? And then you have hope that your kids will continue. Yeah. So I think that's also why I never wanted to be a winemaker. I don't have the patience to see that process through.
Speaker #1
Yeah, it's a bit of my worry as well. You know, Burgundy took more than 1000 years to look like what it looks like now. So I'm like... I won't have the opportunity to witness that from my living, but it's still a good moment to discover Chinese wines because if you had the opportunity to be there at the start of Burgundy, then it would have been fun to have recordings and places you've been to. So that's fun. Is there anything we haven't talked about? Trying to look into that. I think the book, we've covered it. Carrier is done. Chinese wines we talked about it Master of Wine 67 we talked about it Genesis Robinson we talked about it so it's a we've covered plenty of aspects but are there anything you're thinking about that we didn't cover no I think we've covered a lot there and yeah
Speaker #0
the book the wine yeah we've ticked all the boxes
Speaker #1
I think it's okay I have three last questions that are pretty traditional in this podcast.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
The first one is, do you have a book recommendation about wine? So obviously we recommend you Wine and the Food of Asia. Thank you. Link in description.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
Do you have any other books you would recommend?
Speaker #0
Yeah. So I've just started reading a book called One in a Billion, which is a memoir of Sonal Holland MW, who's India's first master of wine. And she's also a friend. so I helped her with her studies and we've traveled together and we collaborate on different projects. And it's... Her story of how she came from a very humble background in India and worked her way up through the wine industry from nothing. And, you know, her story is really breathtaking. You know, the likelihood of her achieving what she's achieved is so low. And she's worked so hard and achieved so much. You know, she now is a huge social media presence. She has over a million followers on Instagram. She's really... driving wine appreciation in India. And so it's a fascinating story. I think it's very interesting to anybody that loves wine. I think it's super interesting to anyone who's interested in Asia and how wine is working in Asia. But I also think it's a very human story. So I think for people that maybe don't even particularly drink wine very much, they're going to find something in there that is a really interesting reflection of one person just being very determined and very uh
Speaker #1
very ambitious yeah i will uh i will definitely read the book um i understood the the title after you you described yeah this but yeah when you are the only master of wine in a country of 1.3 billion exactly yeah it's crazy and um yeah i think that uh the willingness to go through the wine industry,
Speaker #0
which
Speaker #1
I guess is not that present in India.
Speaker #0
No.
Speaker #1
To like... get out of your situation and achieve something yeah is because you can you can be like okay maybe automotive industry is a bit more likely for you to you know uh have a certain range of income but yeah wine industry is way more i guess unsure in in india so in any case i'd be glad to to read the book um do you have a recent wine tasting that you loved yeah it was a really good wine tasting and the wines were really good.
Speaker #0
And the reason I loved it actually was because of the conversation. This comes back to almost what we were saying at the beginning. So the producer is called Hundred Hills. They're in Oxfordshire in England and they make great English sparkling wine. I'd never met the owner before and I didn't really know the brand. And we tasted the wines and the wines were very good. And we went around the vineyard and it's very beautiful, which, you know, happens a lot. You know, if you're lucky, yeah, you get to visit these places and they're all... they're all great what i really enjoyed is when we sat down and we talked about the business side and we talked about the reality of branding and profit margins and marketing support and distribution and so many producers really don't understand how the reality works in the wine industry and so this was a conversation that was that was very honest it was really useful for me to hear it from a producer's perspective? And so I very much valued that. And like I said, of course, the wines were fantastic. So it was a range of wines with some with very long Lee's age, some Blanc de Noir, some Blanc de Blanc. So it was good to see, you know, he was making these very different expressions. But they were all there for good commercial reasons. You know, they all had a route to market. They all existed, not just because they were great wines, but because they're a good business.
Speaker #1
it's a so so First, thank you for the recommendation. We'll definitely try to find some bottles. And it's also something I witnessed in China. During the tasting we had, the estate had a Blanc de Noir. So still wine, but Blanc de Noir. Okay. And we're like, oh, so you always wanted to do a Blanc de Noir and everything. And they were like, no, but the demand right now for white wine is greater. And we don't have time to plant. Yeah. You know. So we just. do the winemaking in Blanc de Noir and then it's okay and it's fascinating because I think it's definitely not the type of discussions I would have in France with someone producing Blanc de Noir you know you'd be like no it's deeply rooted in the history of my family and whatever yeah and these guys were super pragmatic they were like you know markets want white wine this is a way for me to offer white wine
Speaker #0
I do this and we see so well I'll tell you one more tasting actually that I had recently that was very interesting for similar reasons. was the Chardonnay from Fleur de Bois in La Lande Pomerant. And it's classified as just a Vendor. In fact, no, it's not a Vendor France. It's a Vendor Paid Atlantique. And it's the first Chardonnay from Bordeaux I ever tasted. And it's good. You know, it's great. It tastes like a good village level Burgundy. And the fact that they're trying this new variety for Bordeaux. And this new approach, selling a white wine that is non-native. to Bordeaux region is I think a great innovation especially for France you know it's a big risk doing something like that but it's been successful so they were saying that you know they have three hectares right now but they're going to be top grafting some of their Merlot I think over to Chardonnay because they want to increase the sales of their white wine so that's that's a big change and you know when they're making good wine and if they have demand for it then that's great idea.
Speaker #1
definitely is it so it's fleur de bois fleur de bois So we'll also try to find this. We have good connections in Bordeaux now. So we'll try to find this. Thank you very much for this, Richard. Last question is, who is the next person I should interview?
Speaker #0
Well, this is a very apposite moment because I was just having lunch with him. Eddie McDougall is an Australian winemaker, entrepreneur, founder of the Wynn. signature China Wine Awards, who we've worked with at 67 Palmel. He's just launched a range of his own wines called E.J. McDougall, which are Australian. There's a Margaret River Chardonnay and a McLaren Vale Shiraz and a Grenache and so on. And he has got such a good, balanced perspective of the wine industry. It's really interesting to talk to him because he understands production. He understands marketing distribution. He understands retail. And he was also early in his career, he had a TV show. And so he was very like a very early kind of media personality where he was traveling around the world. It was called The Flying Winemaker and sort of giving these wine advice. He's also just such a lovely, genuine guy. He's got a fascinating story and I think he'd be a good person to talk to.
Speaker #1
Absolutely. Thank you very much for this recommendation. We'll try to catch him if he's in Hong Kong. We'll definitely try to catch him in the next few days. Richard, thank you very much for all this. It was a really nice conversation. Thank you very much for opening up about your career and what you did so far. Can't wait to do the next episode in 20 years. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Well, who knows where we're going to be by then. But yeah, it would be my pleasure.
Speaker #1
For sure. What is true is that it was a very nice moment for me. I hope that you guys enjoyed this moment as well. If you enjoyed it, please share it to at least two persons. Send it to email, WhatsApp, I don't know what, Instagram, whatever. Richard, thanks again and see you next time.
Speaker #0
My pleasure. Thanks,
Speaker #1
Antoine. Perfect.
Speaker #0
All good?

About Wine Makers Show: the wine podcast

What to Expect

In-Depth Interviews: Hear from top figures in the wine world, from renowned vintners to unsung heroes, as they share their experiences, challenges, and secrets to success.
Club Episodes: Explore specific wine topics, from production techniques to tasting tips, in focused, occasional deep dives.
A Journey of Discovery: Whether you're a novice or a connoisseur, we break down the complexities of wine to make it accessible and engaging.

Why Listen?

Connect with Us

Visit winemakersshow.com to get in touch or suggest a guest.
Email Antoine directly at winemakersshow@gmail.com.
Follow the journey on Instagram: @winemakersshow
Join the Academy and learn everything about wine

Tune in to Wine Makers Show and sip on the stories behind every bottle!

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About Wine Makers Show: the wine podcast

What to Expect

In-Depth Interviews: Hear from top figures in the wine world, from renowned vintners to unsung heroes, as they share their experiences, challenges, and secrets to success.
Club Episodes: Explore specific wine topics, from production techniques to tasting tips, in focused, occasional deep dives.
A Journey of Discovery: Whether you're a novice or a connoisseur, we break down the complexities of wine to make it accessible and engaging.

Why Listen?

Connect with Us

Visit winemakersshow.com to get in touch or suggest a guest.
Email Antoine directly at winemakersshow@gmail.com.
Follow the journey on Instagram: @winemakersshow
Join the Academy and learn everything about wine

Tune in to Wine Makers Show and sip on the stories behind every bottle!

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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Description

Discover how Richard Hemming went from a student with zero wine knowledge to a Master of Wine, a writer for Jancis Robinson, and now Head of Wine for 67 Pall Mall Asia.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 🎁 GIFTS 🎁 ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

📚 One In a Billion: Becoming India’s First Master of Wine, by Sonal C. Holland MW, India’s first Master of Wine: a deeply inspiring memoir about determination, passion, and overcoming the odds

📚 Wine & The Food of Asia, by Richard Hemming: explores how to successfully pair wines with the rich diversity of Asian cuisines, from Indian to Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Chinese and more

🍷 Discover the 67 Pall Mall universe

🤓 Join the Academy and learn all you need to know about wine

🎁 Get your wine essentials on our shop: a curated selection of wine glasses, posters and much more

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⭐️ ABOUT ⭐️ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

ALCOHOL ABUSE IS DANGEROUS FOUR YOUR HEALTH. CONSUME IN MODERATION.

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Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi, Richard.
Speaker #1
Hi.
Speaker #0
Thank you very much for having us at 67 Pall Mall on Hollywood in Hong Kong. So it's actually the second time we start this recording, but I didn't have the answer to the first question. We had a machine at the back just making some terrible noise. So we decided to start again. I was saying thank you very much for having us. You're the head of wine for 67 Pall Mall. You're a master of wine. You've recently published a book about wine and the food of Asia.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Among plenty of other things, I'm sure, that we'll dig into it. My first question is always the same. Can you start by introducing yourself?
Speaker #1
Sure. So my name is Richard Hemming, and I am a master of wine. As you said, I've been a master of wine since 2015, but I started my wine career in 2001, which was in London working for a retailer called Majestic. and before that I had no wine knowledge but... After I started with them, I went through the WSET and then I left them in 2007, started working in Australia. And from there, I started writing for Jancis Robinson's website. And then fast forward to 2019 and I relocated to Singapore, which is where I'm based now, as head of Wine Asia for 67 Pal Mal, but also still working for Jancis. and doing a few other things too.
Speaker #0
What made you decide to go into this first wine retailer, wine shop? How did you... Was it just like, okay, there is light, I need a job, let's go for it?
Speaker #1
Yeah, pretty much like that. You know, I was studying in Leeds University. And I had a degree in English, but I didn't want to be a... English teacher or anything like that. So I was looking for a job and they were advertising in the back of the student newspaper for this wine shop called Majestic Wine. So I applied for the job and that was it. I had no idea about wine, really. I drank the cheapest wine that they were selling in the supermarkets back then. I remember it was a Spanish wine and it was red, but that was it. I had nothing, no knowledge at all. And so it was really just the fact that it was a good career it looked like they had a scheme to promote their trainees so that you could move up quickly and you could be a manager of a shop so that was why and what um like
Speaker #0
before started this job maybe it's a difficult question because it may be a bit harder to remember now but when you started a job did you add in mind something that you were sure was true for the wine industry or for the wine people and actually turned out to be wrong or the other way around that's like a certitude that you had and actually after a few days of working you're like yeah oh that's a good question no i i assumed when i started that wine
Speaker #1
was this very um specialized subject that you had to learn a lot about before you could enjoy it and then ironically enough when i learned a lot about it I understood how, you know, really it should just be accessible. It should just be a daily pleasure that you enjoy with meals, that you share a glass with friends. But the culture in the UK was never really like that. You know, in France and in mainland Europe, the culture of just opening a bottle with your family on a daily basis, I think, is much more normal. And in the family I grew up in, you know, wine was something very special. You would only have it.
Speaker #0
On Sunday, isn't that?
Speaker #1
For Sunday lunch. And my dad would buy a bottle. He had no idea what he was buying, but he liked the idea of buying a bottle of wine and having a glass with Sunday roast. And so I always viewed it as this very specialized subject. And then, like I said, I came to understand that really the true pleasure of wine is that it just brings people together to share a glass, talk, have some good food. and you don't need to know what it is so long as you're enjoying it and sharing it with people. I think that's the main power that wine has.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it definitely gathers people and makes you more open to communicate. I don't know, it must be rooted in our DNA or historic things, but it's funny that you say that. In the podcast, we had the opportunity to interview Pierre Lurton from Cheval Blanc and Ikem. And we were talking, like, his wines are absolutely exceptional among the top wines in the world. And we were talking about how... still simple the like the best moments you can have with these wines are not in like a you know white napkin super classifying it's just like opening a bottle on a on a friday evening with your wife and a few friends yeah and then you just uh you just enjoy it yeah and with simple dishes and things like that it makes the the whole difference so it's so true and and when And sometimes when I've experienced some of the most...
Speaker #1
prestigious bottles you know the very fancy most expensive whether it's burgundy or nappa or anything often i experience those as a professional in a professional context so at a tasting you know it's very clinical and you're taking detailed tasting notes and everybody's concentrating and actually you don't really have much fun you don't really enjoy the wine as it's intended but you can have a very humble wine in a great setting with people that you love and that brings it alive you know and that context is so important and i think it's one of the things that's easy to forget when people become obsessed with particular labels or you know collecting certain vintages they can forget that actually you know it's not really about what's inside the bottle it's what experience you're having outside the bottle yeah
Speaker #0
And it's like one of the good ways to reduce that is to try to taste blindly almost everything, you know. Yeah. And just see if you enjoy it or not. That type of thing makes the game way more fun, you know. Yes. Just with friends, everyone brings a bottle, you don't know what you're drinking. And then suddenly you realize that you like certain things that you thought were absolutely horrible the other way around. Yeah. So it's fun. So how long do you work at this first experience in the UK?
Speaker #1
It was six years. And because I had no wine knowledge when I started, during that time, I did all of the WSET qualifications. So I took the diploma, I think, in 2005. And then I left the company in 2007.
Speaker #0
Okay. And then, so you leave this company, you told me you were going to Australia. Is it because you had an opportunity there or you had no idea and just took a plane?
Speaker #1
A bit of both. I had an opportunity to do vintage in McLaren Vale. in 2008. So I went over to Australia in 2007 and I was 29 years old at the time. And that was my last chance to get a holiday working visa. So I worked, I could work there for one year and you could only stay in a job for six months. So I landed in Sydney and I got a job at a wine shop. And then I went to McLaren Vale in early 2008 to do vintage there.
Speaker #0
And what did you experience? So it was your first time in the vineyard?
Speaker #1
Yeah. And actually, most of my time I was in the winery. They made a lot of Shiraz. And I was mostly doing pump overs. So it's very physical. It was an extremely hot vintage, like even more hot than South Australia is normally. So I was just carting all of these hoses around and setting up. pump overs and it was it was a great learning experience like actually being able to understand how all of these things work in practice fantastic learning experience i've got to say it put me off making wine for life like i'm glad i'd done it once but i don't really want to do it again it's not it's not the thing that makes me excited um i love visiting and i love talking to people and tasting the wine of course but physically making the wine no that's not for me
Speaker #0
And do you think that seeing that, did it change your perception of selling wines, sharing wines? You know, like, were you realizing that in this first job in the UK, you were missing something?
Speaker #1
Yes. Well, it was more that having this perspective on the inside of how wine is made allowed me to write a diary of my experiences. which is how I got onto jantisrobinson.com. So I never planned it that way, but it was seeing the inside of the reality of production. And I wrote about it every week. I was writing a kind of report and it was sort of incognito. So I wasn't naming the producer. And I was able to be quite honest about everything that was going on. You know, there was a few practices that were a little bit hidden you know watering down the the the ferments that kind of thing so it was very honest and i think a lot of people appreciated the fact that i was able to just be truthful. So that was how I ended up going into the communication side of the wine industry. So it wasn't so much that, you know, I had an intention or that I was expecting to get a certain experience, but it was very fortunate that I managed to have this opportunity to start writing. And then that took me into my next phase.
Speaker #0
Which was next phase still Australia, because you stayed longer than a year, actually.
Speaker #1
uh no actually i know so i came back to london later that year um and then i met with uh jancis who you know she'd been very very kind and had published these articles but i'd never met her in person and this was before zoom calls right so we hadn't even met online we just emailed and she said that she was happy for me to continue writing for the website and so that was yeah 2008 and ever since then i've been writing for the site on a regular basis.
Speaker #0
And when you started writing about this experience in Australia, were you already publishing yourself online? Or you were sending it to Gen 6 and a few people?
Speaker #1
Yes, exactly that. It's funny because back then, this was before Twitter, before Instagram.
Speaker #0
You were doing a newsletter.
Speaker #1
Not even that. You know what I was doing? I was writing articles. and then just saving them as Word documents on my computer. I never did anything with them, except I entered this competition, which was run in the UK, and it was for young wine writers. And I never actually won, but I came second. And I think the winner got a contract to write for a magazine, but the second place got nothing. I was so close. And that's why I thought, well, okay, I must be okay at writing. So then I just decided to send the article that I had written to Jancis Robinson, but also to a few other people. And I just said, do whatever you want. Yeah, is this any good? Can you help? And it was Jancis that got back to me and said, well, yeah, why don't we figure something out?
Speaker #0
And so it started like that and you continued.
Speaker #1
ever ever since writing and being with her yeah and i think a lot of people work like that in wine um you because it's a it's an it's an industry that brings people together and it's very hospitable and it's very communal and so you get these opportunities that you never expected and then you just kind of follow them and see where they go and you know i never would have predicted i would come to Singapore. I never would have predicted I would be doing, you know, writing books and working in membership clubs. But it all happened one thing after the other.
Speaker #0
How did you, what did you notice in wine media? So it's been like 10 years you've been writing about wine and like gravitating around this place. What changes have you seen in the wine media?
Speaker #1
Well, I've been... I think both lucky and in a way unlucky. When I started out 2008, my ambition was to get a newspaper column because at the time that was the best way of getting your name out there. And it's still, obviously it would be a great, very prestigious thing to have, but nowadays, really there's so few good... newspaper columns available because the media landscape has changed completely. So I've been unfortunate in that way because a lot of the money in writing has disappeared. You know, there's no kind of good way to make a profit in print media anymore, really. And even online, if you want to earn a living, you're probably having to do sponsorship deals or advertising. It's very hard to get. readers to actually pay you their own money to take your content. I mean, it's just normal now. So that perhaps was kind of unlucky timing. But then, of course, what happened in its place is social media has been the biggest change. And I was on Twitter for quite a long time, Instagram, not so much, but all of those platforms for communication. sub stack is something that i'm now doing uh quite a lot and i'm really enjoying that and actually that is a way that you can get people to pay you you know for your content and i just feel like it's a really interesting So the dynamic has shifted a lot. It's much easier now to get anybody can go online and publish themselves. And that's quite amazing when you think about it. You know, 20 years ago, that was impossible. You could have a blog. But really, it was very different to today. So anybody can do it. As a result, there's a lot of competition. There's a lot of voices out there. It's hard to cut through the noise. And it's also hard to make an income. But in terms of, you know, being able to speak directly to your audience, I mean, there's nothing better. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So, by the way, this podcast is not sponsored or advertised. So you've heard the return of the state to reach out to me. No, but I guess Substack or the renewal of newsletter as we now know it, it's kind of the same as being. in a good column in a good newspaper yeah because it's the same for me it's kind of the same atmosphere that you could have maybe 20 30 40 years ago when you were reading a newspaper and there weren't just advertisement everywhere and and you know it's often well written it often goes in depth in a topic and like it's just at least the the sub stack i'm following it's always I feel very good quality writing about things that are really interesting to me. And so for me, it's really the equivalent of being in a good newspaper.
Speaker #1
Well, that's nice to hear because I feel the same. And I actually follow more non-wine writers. So I follow some people who write about entertainment and culture. And I don't... buy any newspapers now you know it's a shame because i love the idea of newspapers but the convenience of getting an emailed report from your favorite writers you know once a week or once a month is just fantastic um and what i think will be a big question is how sustainable is it for individuals to subscribe to multiple substacks you know if you have 10 substacks that you pay money for that you're paying quite a lot yeah it starts to be a lot and i think maybe we'll see some consolidation there um i saw somebody actually writing about this on substack saying that they wish that you could pay substack a monthly fee and
Speaker #0
that each month you could change who you subscribe to yeah and then five subscription and yeah they share money and actually i really see the point of that
Speaker #1
So I think we're going to see more changes in that field.
Speaker #0
Yeah, for sure. Because there is no newsletter super expensive, but it can be like three, four US per month. But if you do that like 10 times, you end up spending 50, 60, even 100 US per month on newsletter, which is a lot. Okay, so you've continued writing like that. Back to London. you're working with with Genesis Robinson and so then you have the opportunity to go to Singapore is it with 67 or still with with Genesis no it was neither actually so it was
Speaker #1
2018 and when the Brexit vote came my wife and I just decided that we wanted to move and we were we had no idea where so we just started looking My wife at the time was a head teacher of a primary school. So we knew that we could go anywhere that has international schools. And we found a few different options, but the best one was in Singapore. And I'd been to Singapore once and I thought, okay, well, seems great. So she applied for the job. She got the job. Within less than one year, we'd moved, relocated. And we had honestly no intention of doing it before. So it happened very quick. At the same time, by sheer coincidence, 67 Palmal was starting to develop a club in Singapore. And I was a member of the club in London. So when we moved to Singapore and they had this opportunity to work on a new club, of course, I was very happy to take the opportunity. And so I just started out working with them for just one day a week. And then it built up. into the role I have now.
Speaker #0
Okay. And so what was this day a week? It was just basically like contributing to opening the club?
Speaker #1
It was really, we did a weekly tour of the site. So when we first started operating in Singapore, we had the premises, which was this beautiful penthouse of a... a skyscraper but it was empty there was nothing literally just bare concrete and we would take people around with a glass of champagne and show them the site and say okay this is going to be the restaurant this will be the event space we have the wine tower we've got this terrace outside and we would sell the dream of the club to prospective members and so every week i was meeting 20 or 30 people and showing them around. And I could tell them my experience of the club in London and I could tell them, you know, my story about wine. So we started to build this community and then we had COVID. And so what happened then was everything went online, as you know. So we just started doing webinars and we would send wine to our, you know, contacts and our friends who had met. And every week we'd sit down and share a glass and I would be hosting either a winemaker or an expert talking about wine. And so it built up very gradually. But that, I think, worked in our favor because we were able to build a trust of these people. And then the club opened in 2022. And by that time, we had a full membership already. on the day that we opened. So it was a great way of... It's nice, yeah. Yeah, it's really great, you know. And ever since then, we've had this full membership.
Speaker #0
And so on your side, you've expanded from hosting these tastings, doing the tours and stuff, to a larger role that is head of wine. Yes. What does it look like?
Speaker #1
Well, I work with four departments, events, marketing, sommelier. and cellar. And my job is really to make sure that anywhere in the club that the wine proposition is top quality. So if it's buying, or if it's running an event, or if it's communication, writing a newsletter, I work with all of those teams. So last night, we did an event here in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Club, and I was working with a team here. And I was hosting the event. And, you know, it's just trying to ensure that that quality level is uncompromising.
Speaker #0
And so you do that for Southeast Asia? Yes.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And also for Australia. So we have this club coming in Melbourne. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Okay. So here, for example, in Hong Kong, you have a very good selection of Chinese wines. Yeah. It was something that we noticed and we absolutely liked the day we came. Is it the same in all clubs or you try to have different selections and different atmospheres?
Speaker #1
We have. So in the London club and the Singapore club, and also to a certain extent, the club in Verbier in Switzerland, we have a very big range of wine by the glass. So in Singapore and London, we have 1000 wines by the glass and it's all done by Coravan and it's a huge range. So of course, we have all of the classics from Burgundy and Bordeaux and Loire and Rhone and everywhere. But we also have much less well-known wines like Chinese wines, but also we have a wine from Thailand. We have wine from Uruguay, Greece, Turkey, anywhere, because we want to try and represent the whole world of wine. Here in Hong Kong, we've got these Chinese wines here. Right now we have 67 wines by the glass, all Chinese. Before this, we had all Pinot Noir. Before that, we had all champagne. And the next phase will be all 2015. Because that's the 10th anniversary of the club. So we will have not just red wines, but we will have some interesting white wines from 2015. And of course, champagnes from 2015. So each time here, we have a very specific theme, but it's like a small...
Speaker #0
proportion of what the club offers overall when when we're working at the full scale and so here here in hong kong you're doing even based uh maybe not even based but like seasonal selection of wine that you're changing like that yeah it's amazing yeah exactly okay i thought it was like permanent no we've we've we we extended this chinese wine wall because it
Speaker #1
was so popular um so normally we change every three months. But I think we've run this for six months now.
Speaker #0
Okay, wow.
Speaker #1
And so we really wanted to support Chinese wine because it's so rare and interesting, you know, to the wider world. They don't really know much about it. And then, yeah, like I said, the next themes, who knows, after the 2015s, we'll keep on changing things.
Speaker #0
We'll be there for the 2015 for sure. It could be good,
Speaker #1
that one.
Speaker #0
It was a very nice vintage in a lot of places in the world. Exactly. So it's great to rediscover it. And actually, so we started this podcast in 2018, 2019. so I think that 2015 was among the first vintages that we had the opportunity to taste with the the winemakers you know like going to the estates and discussing with them we call it like i have good memories of us in bordeaux at chateau de ferrand for example in saint-emilion and just like tasting the 2015 i think we have a magnum of 2015 from ferrand in france yeah so you know it's it's good memories for us um so 67 pole mall we haven't actually described what is 67 we entered into your role and what you're doing but it's basically a members club in plenty of cities so I know Bordeaux, London Singapore Hong Kong you've mentioned Verbier yes you told me that Melbourne was opening soon yes
Speaker #1
Shanghai as well Shanghai as well and then Bone also no? Bone is coming yes Bone is coming as well that will be a small club but yes we have a property there and in future there will be more sites being announced so they're not official yet they're mostly in asia uh and they're in the kind of cities that you would expect so the big cities the big international cities so there are plans for quite a few more coming nice uh can't
Speaker #0
wait to travel to china and go discover them it's always a always a good place so it's a members club uh so you have to sign up it's a yearly fee or something like that yeah yeah And then you can come basically.
Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. So the advantage for a wine lover is firstly that you get access to this incredible range of wine. So 1,000 by the glass, but we have something like 5,000 by the bottle. We have a great events program. So we're doing winemaker masterclasses, dinners two or three times every week. And again, the range is everything from really high end, super premium Bordeaux and Burgundy and champagne through to. new discoveries from Australia or South Africa. So we really try and cover everything. But another important point is that the wine list is very competitively priced. So you're paying around half what you would pay in a good restaurant or a good hotel. So the whole idea of paying a membership fee is that you get access to this discounted wine.
Speaker #0
Yeah, that's what I saw when I entered here a bit earlier is that you have, so I don't know if you see it on camera, but there are some sparkling wine. I was super impressed by the price. Yes, exactly. Like it's 140, so basically 15 euros.
Speaker #1
and i'm like exactly that is i mean it is it's encouraging people to experiment and when the cost is very reasonable and they think okay i'll just try this because you know, it's very affordable. And then they find they love it and then they try something else. And, you know, our sommeliers are always very happy to recommend something different and unusual. So it's a good relationship.
Speaker #0
And so you were a member of this club when you were in London. And then so you started working for this club.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Are there, like, did you notice difference between what you expected and what you see between, like, did you have expectations when you started to work with them?
Speaker #1
Um... The answer is yes and no. It was, I had no idea about the realities of the business side. And that has been so interesting. Working with the profit and loss, the kind of logistics, all of the nuts and bolts that make a hospitality business work. I had no idea. Behind the scenes, there's so much more going on than most people realize. You know, you go into the club, you go into any restaurant, you see this beautiful room. Somebody greets you, you sit down, you have a nice meal. And then you don't realize that behind the scenes, there's all of this stuff happening. So that was really interesting. But the fundamental...
Speaker #0
motivation of the club which is to share great wine with great people that's the same in front of house or in back of house and so long as that stays central to the club you know that's what makes it such a great place to work such a great place to be a member um
Speaker #1
so you've also wrote this book wine in the food of uh of asia yeah How did you start it? It was just like you were passionate about this and you're like, okay, let's...
Speaker #0
Well, not really, honestly. I'd never written a book and I also never really written about food and wine matching of any kind. So when the founder of the club, Grant, asked me to write a book, he said, you know, you should... think about doing Asian food. And actually, that was something I knew nothing about. So I was a little bit worried. And it was turned out to be the perfect subject because I'm not an expert. And I was able to learn as I wrote the book. So I was able to explain things from the beginning. And I still don't think I'm an expert. But this book represents a very honest reflection of the research that I did. And I really did try hundreds of combinations. And we did everything at the club in Singapore. So we would put 10 wines on the table, and then we would prepare maybe six or seven dishes. And they were very different. So we'd have some Indian cuisine, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian. And I'd be trying like, I'm going to try a Viognier with this one. Okay, it doesn't work. Now I'll try it with this one. Oh no, maybe I'll try the Sauvignon Blanc here. I mean, it was completely random, but I made a spreadsheet, this crazy, enormous spreadsheet, which it recorded all of my reactions. And then I started to see patterns. And so I started to figure out, okay, this style of wine goes well with this style of food. So I need to figure out why. I try it more times with different variations. So if it worked with Sauvignon Blanc, is it just Loire Sauvignon Blanc? Or does it also work with Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc? And does it work with Oaked Sauvignon Blanc? And I really did take it step by step like that. And the whole book from start to finish was a two-year project because it took me that long to work on how everything paired together. So when I... tell people about the book. The thing I can tell very honestly is that it's, I know that it works for me. These pairings are not theoretical. They have been tested and I've cooked the dishes at home and I've poured the wines and I've served them to friends and I can stand behind them and say, honestly, this works for me. I think I can explain why it works. And then I just leave it to you to decide if it's a good thing.
Speaker #1
for you personally or or not because not everybody has to agree i don't know if the if the process of writing this book looks like a dream or a nightmare yeah i had to i had to experience six different dishes with 20 different wines at the same time so i envy you at the same time like yeah but if you need to do that three times a week for two years it was a lot let me tell you that um i love the fact that it exists now i really i'm very proud of it and i love
Speaker #0
talking about it and showing it to people the writing process that was the nightmare part and and it really was very hard to to figure it out and also to explain it in in language that was clear and comprehensible and
Speaker #1
so basically for for this uh grant so the the founder of 67 had this id yes and he came to see you he said richard you're gonna do it exactly so i had no choice
Speaker #0
And I'm glad because I never would have, under my own initiative, I never would have thought of this. Yeah.
Speaker #1
You were saying, introducing this book, you were saying that you're not an expert. But there is one thing in your career that we didn't mention is that you have also became a master of wine. So a bit earlier, we talked about your wine education, like going through the WICT level. So you told me you graduated from WICT 3 in like 2007 or 9, something like that. Yeah. You told me. But a bit before, you told me that you became a Master of Wine way after that.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
So first, how do you decide to start wanting to go for Master of Wine?
Speaker #0
Well, the honest answer is that... When I came back to the UK after Australia, and I'd started this writing career, and I started to meet some other wine writers that were around my age, and one of them in particular had just signed up for the MW course. And until that point, I had zero intention of ever studying for the Master of Wine. To me, it was something impossible. But when I realized that... I was working alongside these kind of people that would have the, you know, the option to do this. I realized I should probably think about it. So then actually the following year I signed up and the person that I was kind of inspired by, actually, she became a master of wine as well. She's called Rebecca Gibb. She's based in the UK and she's a wine writer. and She became a master of wine just a few years before me. So I have to give her the credit for inspiring me to take the jump. It took a long time because, well, you know, it takes a long time. It took me six years. And when I started on the course, you're right, that it'd been a long time since I'd taken my WSET. So my knowledge was actually not great. I had to work very hard to reach the standard that... you needed to be at but um it was also the best most worthwhile thing i've done in terms of developing my career for sure okay so now i'm worried because we start to interview several master of wine and having them around me so yeah
Speaker #1
it's gonna be you next yeah you should sign up for sure why not yeah because uh six years is a long commitment and it's really hard but One day, maybe, we'd probably love to, but it's a lot of things to discover. Can you tell us a bit more about, so basically, Master of Wine, you need to know everything about how wine is produced around the world.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and that's a key point, what you just said, around the world. You need to be able to talk about all the areas of wine on a global scale. So you have a paper on viticulture, and you need to reference viticulture in very classic regions like Bordeaux, but also in emerging regions like Hebei in China or South Africa or anywhere. And to have that global perspective is very important. But you also need to have the same global perspective for winemaking, for business, for contemporary issues, which means anything that is sort of current, like... A lot of people right now, they're talking about drinking in moderation and avoiding alcohol. And so having a good understanding of all of those things is really vital to being able to pass the exams.
Speaker #1
So it's definitely a lot of work and very large commitment before doing that. And so for you, you said it changed a lot of things in your career.
Speaker #0
It did, yeah. it was Firstly, it gave me the confidence because, you know, when you get that degree, you're in a very small group of people globally and you're in a really great network. So not only do you get great opportunities for work, but you can say to people, look, you know, I have the credibility. I've been through this process. I've spent the time working on it. And it really, you know, it's worth something. So you're able to, you know, charge more. You know, frankly, you are able to increase your earnings because you have a value that is intrinsic to the MW. So yeah, in terms of my career progression, when I passed that exam, it really opened up a big new opportunity.
Speaker #1
You talked about Hubei just before. I think it's a good transition to the wine we are tasting.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
Whole different topic. but so We had the opportunity to just take a glass while recording this podcast. And we had this wine.
Speaker #0
Yes, which is a Tempranillo by a producer called Chapter and Verse. It's 2015 vintage. And actually, something I've, because I've been tasting a lot of Chinese wines recently, and something I've really been pleased to find is that there are some good examples of how well these wines are maturing. And I think this tastes like a classic Tempranillo with bottle age. you know The question is, does it taste Chinese? I don't know. I mean, if I tasted this blind... I would never guess Chinese spontaneously. I think it has the classic characteristics of Tempranillo. And I think it has a sort of fruit ripeness that I would associate with non-European countries. But would I get to China? I have no idea. But it's great winemaking. It's beautifully balanced and it's developing well. And yeah, it's a lovely wine.
Speaker #1
Very lovely. And, you know, so for us, we are discovering Chinese wines. We really wanted to go to tasting, go in China, discover this place. And what I noticed is that for a lot of wines, I think that tasting blind, I can't tell if it's from China or somewhere else.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
But I have never, well, of course, there are some wines I don't like, but most of the times it's technically very, very well done. You know, like it's very... It's actually very good wines. It's like a good Tom Franilo. It's what you would expect from a bottle-aged 2015 Tom Franilo. It's absolutely nice. And so this step is granted, I think, for China now. They are producing very good wines to the international standard of wine. Now the question is, can you do wines that express something differently? Yes. You know, like having your... own identity yeah and i feel like they start to to want to do this but it's the next step in every vineyard it's like first you want to master it then you want to express something so it's like yeah it's like artist you know picasso started by painting
Speaker #0
very conventional things and then he evolved so yeah that's a good that's a good analogy there and we are starting to see some the best producers who are exploring their terroir and making smaller parcels, making micro vinifications, trying to tell the story of their place, not just a variety. And it takes a long time. I think the thing that is most frustrating about developing a wine identity is that the one thing you cannot control is time. And that means time in the bottle for it to mature, but also time for the vines to grow maturity. And also time for you to understand what you can do. A lot of the time when people are starting out in vineyards, they just try anything. You know, you plant Cabernet and Riesling next to each other. And then you figure out that one is successful and one you need to change. And then you realize that your oak regime is too powerful. and it You can only make wine once a year. And so I think it takes an entire lifetime before you really understand. And yeah, at least, right? And then you have hope that your kids will continue. Yeah. So I think that's also why I never wanted to be a winemaker. I don't have the patience to see that process through.
Speaker #1
Yeah, it's a bit of my worry as well. You know, Burgundy took more than 1000 years to look like what it looks like now. So I'm like... I won't have the opportunity to witness that from my living, but it's still a good moment to discover Chinese wines because if you had the opportunity to be there at the start of Burgundy, then it would have been fun to have recordings and places you've been to. So that's fun. Is there anything we haven't talked about? Trying to look into that. I think the book, we've covered it. Carrier is done. Chinese wines we talked about it Master of Wine 67 we talked about it Genesis Robinson we talked about it so it's a we've covered plenty of aspects but are there anything you're thinking about that we didn't cover no I think we've covered a lot there and yeah
Speaker #0
the book the wine yeah we've ticked all the boxes
Speaker #1
I think it's okay I have three last questions that are pretty traditional in this podcast.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
The first one is, do you have a book recommendation about wine? So obviously we recommend you Wine and the Food of Asia. Thank you. Link in description.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
Do you have any other books you would recommend?
Speaker #0
Yeah. So I've just started reading a book called One in a Billion, which is a memoir of Sonal Holland MW, who's India's first master of wine. And she's also a friend. so I helped her with her studies and we've traveled together and we collaborate on different projects. And it's... Her story of how she came from a very humble background in India and worked her way up through the wine industry from nothing. And, you know, her story is really breathtaking. You know, the likelihood of her achieving what she's achieved is so low. And she's worked so hard and achieved so much. You know, she now is a huge social media presence. She has over a million followers on Instagram. She's really... driving wine appreciation in India. And so it's a fascinating story. I think it's very interesting to anybody that loves wine. I think it's super interesting to anyone who's interested in Asia and how wine is working in Asia. But I also think it's a very human story. So I think for people that maybe don't even particularly drink wine very much, they're going to find something in there that is a really interesting reflection of one person just being very determined and very uh
Speaker #1
very ambitious yeah i will uh i will definitely read the book um i understood the the title after you you described yeah this but yeah when you are the only master of wine in a country of 1.3 billion exactly yeah it's crazy and um yeah i think that uh the willingness to go through the wine industry,
Speaker #0
which
Speaker #1
I guess is not that present in India.
Speaker #0
No.
Speaker #1
To like... get out of your situation and achieve something yeah is because you can you can be like okay maybe automotive industry is a bit more likely for you to you know uh have a certain range of income but yeah wine industry is way more i guess unsure in in india so in any case i'd be glad to to read the book um do you have a recent wine tasting that you loved yeah it was a really good wine tasting and the wines were really good.
Speaker #0
And the reason I loved it actually was because of the conversation. This comes back to almost what we were saying at the beginning. So the producer is called Hundred Hills. They're in Oxfordshire in England and they make great English sparkling wine. I'd never met the owner before and I didn't really know the brand. And we tasted the wines and the wines were very good. And we went around the vineyard and it's very beautiful, which, you know, happens a lot. You know, if you're lucky, yeah, you get to visit these places and they're all... they're all great what i really enjoyed is when we sat down and we talked about the business side and we talked about the reality of branding and profit margins and marketing support and distribution and so many producers really don't understand how the reality works in the wine industry and so this was a conversation that was that was very honest it was really useful for me to hear it from a producer's perspective? And so I very much valued that. And like I said, of course, the wines were fantastic. So it was a range of wines with some with very long Lee's age, some Blanc de Noir, some Blanc de Blanc. So it was good to see, you know, he was making these very different expressions. But they were all there for good commercial reasons. You know, they all had a route to market. They all existed, not just because they were great wines, but because they're a good business.
Speaker #1
it's a so so First, thank you for the recommendation. We'll definitely try to find some bottles. And it's also something I witnessed in China. During the tasting we had, the estate had a Blanc de Noir. So still wine, but Blanc de Noir. Okay. And we're like, oh, so you always wanted to do a Blanc de Noir and everything. And they were like, no, but the demand right now for white wine is greater. And we don't have time to plant. Yeah. You know. So we just. do the winemaking in Blanc de Noir and then it's okay and it's fascinating because I think it's definitely not the type of discussions I would have in France with someone producing Blanc de Noir you know you'd be like no it's deeply rooted in the history of my family and whatever yeah and these guys were super pragmatic they were like you know markets want white wine this is a way for me to offer white wine
Speaker #0
I do this and we see so well I'll tell you one more tasting actually that I had recently that was very interesting for similar reasons. was the Chardonnay from Fleur de Bois in La Lande Pomerant. And it's classified as just a Vendor. In fact, no, it's not a Vendor France. It's a Vendor Paid Atlantique. And it's the first Chardonnay from Bordeaux I ever tasted. And it's good. You know, it's great. It tastes like a good village level Burgundy. And the fact that they're trying this new variety for Bordeaux. And this new approach, selling a white wine that is non-native. to Bordeaux region is I think a great innovation especially for France you know it's a big risk doing something like that but it's been successful so they were saying that you know they have three hectares right now but they're going to be top grafting some of their Merlot I think over to Chardonnay because they want to increase the sales of their white wine so that's that's a big change and you know when they're making good wine and if they have demand for it then that's great idea.
Speaker #1
definitely is it so it's fleur de bois fleur de bois So we'll also try to find this. We have good connections in Bordeaux now. So we'll try to find this. Thank you very much for this, Richard. Last question is, who is the next person I should interview?
Speaker #0
Well, this is a very apposite moment because I was just having lunch with him. Eddie McDougall is an Australian winemaker, entrepreneur, founder of the Wynn. signature China Wine Awards, who we've worked with at 67 Palmel. He's just launched a range of his own wines called E.J. McDougall, which are Australian. There's a Margaret River Chardonnay and a McLaren Vale Shiraz and a Grenache and so on. And he has got such a good, balanced perspective of the wine industry. It's really interesting to talk to him because he understands production. He understands marketing distribution. He understands retail. And he was also early in his career, he had a TV show. And so he was very like a very early kind of media personality where he was traveling around the world. It was called The Flying Winemaker and sort of giving these wine advice. He's also just such a lovely, genuine guy. He's got a fascinating story and I think he'd be a good person to talk to.
Speaker #1
Absolutely. Thank you very much for this recommendation. We'll try to catch him if he's in Hong Kong. We'll definitely try to catch him in the next few days. Richard, thank you very much for all this. It was a really nice conversation. Thank you very much for opening up about your career and what you did so far. Can't wait to do the next episode in 20 years. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Well, who knows where we're going to be by then. But yeah, it would be my pleasure.
Speaker #1
For sure. What is true is that it was a very nice moment for me. I hope that you guys enjoyed this moment as well. If you enjoyed it, please share it to at least two persons. Send it to email, WhatsApp, I don't know what, Instagram, whatever. Richard, thanks again and see you next time.
Speaker #0
My pleasure. Thanks,
Speaker #1
Antoine. Perfect.
Speaker #0
All good?

About Wine Makers Show: the wine podcast

What to Expect

In-Depth Interviews: Hear from top figures in the wine world, from renowned vintners to unsung heroes, as they share their experiences, challenges, and secrets to success.
Club Episodes: Explore specific wine topics, from production techniques to tasting tips, in focused, occasional deep dives.
A Journey of Discovery: Whether you're a novice or a connoisseur, we break down the complexities of wine to make it accessible and engaging.

Why Listen?

Connect with Us

Visit winemakersshow.com to get in touch or suggest a guest.
Email Antoine directly at winemakersshow@gmail.com.
Follow the journey on Instagram: @winemakersshow
Join the Academy and learn everything about wine

Tune in to Wine Makers Show and sip on the stories behind every bottle!

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About Wine Makers Show: the wine podcast

What to Expect

In-Depth Interviews: Hear from top figures in the wine world, from renowned vintners to unsung heroes, as they share their experiences, challenges, and secrets to success.
Club Episodes: Explore specific wine topics, from production techniques to tasting tips, in focused, occasional deep dives.
A Journey of Discovery: Whether you're a novice or a connoisseur, we break down the complexities of wine to make it accessible and engaging.

Why Listen?

Connect with Us

Visit winemakersshow.com to get in touch or suggest a guest.
Email Antoine directly at winemakersshow@gmail.com.
Follow the journey on Instagram: @winemakersshow
Join the Academy and learn everything about wine

Tune in to Wine Makers Show and sip on the stories behind every bottle!

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

Discover how Richard Hemming went from a student with zero wine knowledge to a Master of Wine, a writer for Jancis Robinson, and now Head of Wine for 67 Pall Mall Asia.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 🎁 GIFTS 🎁 ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

📚 One In a Billion: Becoming India’s First Master of Wine, by Sonal C. Holland MW, India’s first Master of Wine: a deeply inspiring memoir about determination, passion, and overcoming the odds

📚 Wine & The Food of Asia, by Richard Hemming: explores how to successfully pair wines with the rich diversity of Asian cuisines, from Indian to Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Chinese and more

🍷 Discover the 67 Pall Mall universe

🤓 Join the Academy and learn all you need to know about wine

🎁 Get your wine essentials on our shop: a curated selection of wine glasses, posters and much more

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ ⭐️ ABOUT ⭐️ ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

ALCOHOL ABUSE IS DANGEROUS FOUR YOUR HEALTH. CONSUME IN MODERATION.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Hi, Richard.
Speaker #1
Hi.
Speaker #0
Thank you very much for having us at 67 Pall Mall on Hollywood in Hong Kong. So it's actually the second time we start this recording, but I didn't have the answer to the first question. We had a machine at the back just making some terrible noise. So we decided to start again. I was saying thank you very much for having us. You're the head of wine for 67 Pall Mall. You're a master of wine. You've recently published a book about wine and the food of Asia.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Among plenty of other things, I'm sure, that we'll dig into it. My first question is always the same. Can you start by introducing yourself?
Speaker #1
Sure. So my name is Richard Hemming, and I am a master of wine. As you said, I've been a master of wine since 2015, but I started my wine career in 2001, which was in London working for a retailer called Majestic. and before that I had no wine knowledge but... After I started with them, I went through the WSET and then I left them in 2007, started working in Australia. And from there, I started writing for Jancis Robinson's website. And then fast forward to 2019 and I relocated to Singapore, which is where I'm based now, as head of Wine Asia for 67 Pal Mal, but also still working for Jancis. and doing a few other things too.
Speaker #0
What made you decide to go into this first wine retailer, wine shop? How did you... Was it just like, okay, there is light, I need a job, let's go for it?
Speaker #1
Yeah, pretty much like that. You know, I was studying in Leeds University. And I had a degree in English, but I didn't want to be a... English teacher or anything like that. So I was looking for a job and they were advertising in the back of the student newspaper for this wine shop called Majestic Wine. So I applied for the job and that was it. I had no idea about wine, really. I drank the cheapest wine that they were selling in the supermarkets back then. I remember it was a Spanish wine and it was red, but that was it. I had nothing, no knowledge at all. And so it was really just the fact that it was a good career it looked like they had a scheme to promote their trainees so that you could move up quickly and you could be a manager of a shop so that was why and what um like
Speaker #0
before started this job maybe it's a difficult question because it may be a bit harder to remember now but when you started a job did you add in mind something that you were sure was true for the wine industry or for the wine people and actually turned out to be wrong or the other way around that's like a certitude that you had and actually after a few days of working you're like yeah oh that's a good question no i i assumed when i started that wine
Speaker #1
was this very um specialized subject that you had to learn a lot about before you could enjoy it and then ironically enough when i learned a lot about it I understood how, you know, really it should just be accessible. It should just be a daily pleasure that you enjoy with meals, that you share a glass with friends. But the culture in the UK was never really like that. You know, in France and in mainland Europe, the culture of just opening a bottle with your family on a daily basis, I think, is much more normal. And in the family I grew up in, you know, wine was something very special. You would only have it.
Speaker #0
On Sunday, isn't that?
Speaker #1
For Sunday lunch. And my dad would buy a bottle. He had no idea what he was buying, but he liked the idea of buying a bottle of wine and having a glass with Sunday roast. And so I always viewed it as this very specialized subject. And then, like I said, I came to understand that really the true pleasure of wine is that it just brings people together to share a glass, talk, have some good food. and you don't need to know what it is so long as you're enjoying it and sharing it with people. I think that's the main power that wine has.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it definitely gathers people and makes you more open to communicate. I don't know, it must be rooted in our DNA or historic things, but it's funny that you say that. In the podcast, we had the opportunity to interview Pierre Lurton from Cheval Blanc and Ikem. And we were talking, like, his wines are absolutely exceptional among the top wines in the world. And we were talking about how... still simple the like the best moments you can have with these wines are not in like a you know white napkin super classifying it's just like opening a bottle on a on a friday evening with your wife and a few friends yeah and then you just uh you just enjoy it yeah and with simple dishes and things like that it makes the the whole difference so it's so true and and when And sometimes when I've experienced some of the most...
Speaker #1
prestigious bottles you know the very fancy most expensive whether it's burgundy or nappa or anything often i experience those as a professional in a professional context so at a tasting you know it's very clinical and you're taking detailed tasting notes and everybody's concentrating and actually you don't really have much fun you don't really enjoy the wine as it's intended but you can have a very humble wine in a great setting with people that you love and that brings it alive you know and that context is so important and i think it's one of the things that's easy to forget when people become obsessed with particular labels or you know collecting certain vintages they can forget that actually you know it's not really about what's inside the bottle it's what experience you're having outside the bottle yeah
Speaker #0
And it's like one of the good ways to reduce that is to try to taste blindly almost everything, you know. Yeah. And just see if you enjoy it or not. That type of thing makes the game way more fun, you know. Yes. Just with friends, everyone brings a bottle, you don't know what you're drinking. And then suddenly you realize that you like certain things that you thought were absolutely horrible the other way around. Yeah. So it's fun. So how long do you work at this first experience in the UK?
Speaker #1
It was six years. And because I had no wine knowledge when I started, during that time, I did all of the WSET qualifications. So I took the diploma, I think, in 2005. And then I left the company in 2007.
Speaker #0
Okay. And then, so you leave this company, you told me you were going to Australia. Is it because you had an opportunity there or you had no idea and just took a plane?
Speaker #1
A bit of both. I had an opportunity to do vintage in McLaren Vale. in 2008. So I went over to Australia in 2007 and I was 29 years old at the time. And that was my last chance to get a holiday working visa. So I worked, I could work there for one year and you could only stay in a job for six months. So I landed in Sydney and I got a job at a wine shop. And then I went to McLaren Vale in early 2008 to do vintage there.
Speaker #0
And what did you experience? So it was your first time in the vineyard?
Speaker #1
Yeah. And actually, most of my time I was in the winery. They made a lot of Shiraz. And I was mostly doing pump overs. So it's very physical. It was an extremely hot vintage, like even more hot than South Australia is normally. So I was just carting all of these hoses around and setting up. pump overs and it was it was a great learning experience like actually being able to understand how all of these things work in practice fantastic learning experience i've got to say it put me off making wine for life like i'm glad i'd done it once but i don't really want to do it again it's not it's not the thing that makes me excited um i love visiting and i love talking to people and tasting the wine of course but physically making the wine no that's not for me
Speaker #0
And do you think that seeing that, did it change your perception of selling wines, sharing wines? You know, like, were you realizing that in this first job in the UK, you were missing something?
Speaker #1
Yes. Well, it was more that having this perspective on the inside of how wine is made allowed me to write a diary of my experiences. which is how I got onto jantisrobinson.com. So I never planned it that way, but it was seeing the inside of the reality of production. And I wrote about it every week. I was writing a kind of report and it was sort of incognito. So I wasn't naming the producer. And I was able to be quite honest about everything that was going on. You know, there was a few practices that were a little bit hidden you know watering down the the the ferments that kind of thing so it was very honest and i think a lot of people appreciated the fact that i was able to just be truthful. So that was how I ended up going into the communication side of the wine industry. So it wasn't so much that, you know, I had an intention or that I was expecting to get a certain experience, but it was very fortunate that I managed to have this opportunity to start writing. And then that took me into my next phase.
Speaker #0
Which was next phase still Australia, because you stayed longer than a year, actually.
Speaker #1
uh no actually i know so i came back to london later that year um and then i met with uh jancis who you know she'd been very very kind and had published these articles but i'd never met her in person and this was before zoom calls right so we hadn't even met online we just emailed and she said that she was happy for me to continue writing for the website and so that was yeah 2008 and ever since then i've been writing for the site on a regular basis.
Speaker #0
And when you started writing about this experience in Australia, were you already publishing yourself online? Or you were sending it to Gen 6 and a few people?
Speaker #1
Yes, exactly that. It's funny because back then, this was before Twitter, before Instagram.
Speaker #0
You were doing a newsletter.
Speaker #1
Not even that. You know what I was doing? I was writing articles. and then just saving them as Word documents on my computer. I never did anything with them, except I entered this competition, which was run in the UK, and it was for young wine writers. And I never actually won, but I came second. And I think the winner got a contract to write for a magazine, but the second place got nothing. I was so close. And that's why I thought, well, okay, I must be okay at writing. So then I just decided to send the article that I had written to Jancis Robinson, but also to a few other people. And I just said, do whatever you want. Yeah, is this any good? Can you help? And it was Jancis that got back to me and said, well, yeah, why don't we figure something out?
Speaker #0
And so it started like that and you continued.
Speaker #1
ever ever since writing and being with her yeah and i think a lot of people work like that in wine um you because it's a it's an it's an industry that brings people together and it's very hospitable and it's very communal and so you get these opportunities that you never expected and then you just kind of follow them and see where they go and you know i never would have predicted i would come to Singapore. I never would have predicted I would be doing, you know, writing books and working in membership clubs. But it all happened one thing after the other.
Speaker #0
How did you, what did you notice in wine media? So it's been like 10 years you've been writing about wine and like gravitating around this place. What changes have you seen in the wine media?
Speaker #1
Well, I've been... I think both lucky and in a way unlucky. When I started out 2008, my ambition was to get a newspaper column because at the time that was the best way of getting your name out there. And it's still, obviously it would be a great, very prestigious thing to have, but nowadays, really there's so few good... newspaper columns available because the media landscape has changed completely. So I've been unfortunate in that way because a lot of the money in writing has disappeared. You know, there's no kind of good way to make a profit in print media anymore, really. And even online, if you want to earn a living, you're probably having to do sponsorship deals or advertising. It's very hard to get. readers to actually pay you their own money to take your content. I mean, it's just normal now. So that perhaps was kind of unlucky timing. But then, of course, what happened in its place is social media has been the biggest change. And I was on Twitter for quite a long time, Instagram, not so much, but all of those platforms for communication. sub stack is something that i'm now doing uh quite a lot and i'm really enjoying that and actually that is a way that you can get people to pay you you know for your content and i just feel like it's a really interesting So the dynamic has shifted a lot. It's much easier now to get anybody can go online and publish themselves. And that's quite amazing when you think about it. You know, 20 years ago, that was impossible. You could have a blog. But really, it was very different to today. So anybody can do it. As a result, there's a lot of competition. There's a lot of voices out there. It's hard to cut through the noise. And it's also hard to make an income. But in terms of, you know, being able to speak directly to your audience, I mean, there's nothing better. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah. So, by the way, this podcast is not sponsored or advertised. So you've heard the return of the state to reach out to me. No, but I guess Substack or the renewal of newsletter as we now know it, it's kind of the same as being. in a good column in a good newspaper yeah because it's the same for me it's kind of the same atmosphere that you could have maybe 20 30 40 years ago when you were reading a newspaper and there weren't just advertisement everywhere and and you know it's often well written it often goes in depth in a topic and like it's just at least the the sub stack i'm following it's always I feel very good quality writing about things that are really interesting to me. And so for me, it's really the equivalent of being in a good newspaper.
Speaker #1
Well, that's nice to hear because I feel the same. And I actually follow more non-wine writers. So I follow some people who write about entertainment and culture. And I don't... buy any newspapers now you know it's a shame because i love the idea of newspapers but the convenience of getting an emailed report from your favorite writers you know once a week or once a month is just fantastic um and what i think will be a big question is how sustainable is it for individuals to subscribe to multiple substacks you know if you have 10 substacks that you pay money for that you're paying quite a lot yeah it starts to be a lot and i think maybe we'll see some consolidation there um i saw somebody actually writing about this on substack saying that they wish that you could pay substack a monthly fee and
Speaker #0
that each month you could change who you subscribe to yeah and then five subscription and yeah they share money and actually i really see the point of that
Speaker #1
So I think we're going to see more changes in that field.
Speaker #0
Yeah, for sure. Because there is no newsletter super expensive, but it can be like three, four US per month. But if you do that like 10 times, you end up spending 50, 60, even 100 US per month on newsletter, which is a lot. Okay, so you've continued writing like that. Back to London. you're working with with Genesis Robinson and so then you have the opportunity to go to Singapore is it with 67 or still with with Genesis no it was neither actually so it was
Speaker #1
2018 and when the Brexit vote came my wife and I just decided that we wanted to move and we were we had no idea where so we just started looking My wife at the time was a head teacher of a primary school. So we knew that we could go anywhere that has international schools. And we found a few different options, but the best one was in Singapore. And I'd been to Singapore once and I thought, okay, well, seems great. So she applied for the job. She got the job. Within less than one year, we'd moved, relocated. And we had honestly no intention of doing it before. So it happened very quick. At the same time, by sheer coincidence, 67 Palmal was starting to develop a club in Singapore. And I was a member of the club in London. So when we moved to Singapore and they had this opportunity to work on a new club, of course, I was very happy to take the opportunity. And so I just started out working with them for just one day a week. And then it built up. into the role I have now.
Speaker #0
Okay. And so what was this day a week? It was just basically like contributing to opening the club?
Speaker #1
It was really, we did a weekly tour of the site. So when we first started operating in Singapore, we had the premises, which was this beautiful penthouse of a... a skyscraper but it was empty there was nothing literally just bare concrete and we would take people around with a glass of champagne and show them the site and say okay this is going to be the restaurant this will be the event space we have the wine tower we've got this terrace outside and we would sell the dream of the club to prospective members and so every week i was meeting 20 or 30 people and showing them around. And I could tell them my experience of the club in London and I could tell them, you know, my story about wine. So we started to build this community and then we had COVID. And so what happened then was everything went online, as you know. So we just started doing webinars and we would send wine to our, you know, contacts and our friends who had met. And every week we'd sit down and share a glass and I would be hosting either a winemaker or an expert talking about wine. And so it built up very gradually. But that, I think, worked in our favor because we were able to build a trust of these people. And then the club opened in 2022. And by that time, we had a full membership already. on the day that we opened. So it was a great way of... It's nice, yeah. Yeah, it's really great, you know. And ever since then, we've had this full membership.
Speaker #0
And so on your side, you've expanded from hosting these tastings, doing the tours and stuff, to a larger role that is head of wine. Yes. What does it look like?
Speaker #1
Well, I work with four departments, events, marketing, sommelier. and cellar. And my job is really to make sure that anywhere in the club that the wine proposition is top quality. So if it's buying, or if it's running an event, or if it's communication, writing a newsletter, I work with all of those teams. So last night, we did an event here in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Club, and I was working with a team here. And I was hosting the event. And, you know, it's just trying to ensure that that quality level is uncompromising.
Speaker #0
And so you do that for Southeast Asia? Yes.
Speaker #1
Yeah. And also for Australia. So we have this club coming in Melbourne. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Okay. So here, for example, in Hong Kong, you have a very good selection of Chinese wines. Yeah. It was something that we noticed and we absolutely liked the day we came. Is it the same in all clubs or you try to have different selections and different atmospheres?
Speaker #1
We have. So in the London club and the Singapore club, and also to a certain extent, the club in Verbier in Switzerland, we have a very big range of wine by the glass. So in Singapore and London, we have 1000 wines by the glass and it's all done by Coravan and it's a huge range. So of course, we have all of the classics from Burgundy and Bordeaux and Loire and Rhone and everywhere. But we also have much less well-known wines like Chinese wines, but also we have a wine from Thailand. We have wine from Uruguay, Greece, Turkey, anywhere, because we want to try and represent the whole world of wine. Here in Hong Kong, we've got these Chinese wines here. Right now we have 67 wines by the glass, all Chinese. Before this, we had all Pinot Noir. Before that, we had all champagne. And the next phase will be all 2015. Because that's the 10th anniversary of the club. So we will have not just red wines, but we will have some interesting white wines from 2015. And of course, champagnes from 2015. So each time here, we have a very specific theme, but it's like a small...
Speaker #0
proportion of what the club offers overall when when we're working at the full scale and so here here in hong kong you're doing even based uh maybe not even based but like seasonal selection of wine that you're changing like that yeah it's amazing yeah exactly okay i thought it was like permanent no we've we've we we extended this chinese wine wall because it
Speaker #1
was so popular um so normally we change every three months. But I think we've run this for six months now.
Speaker #0
Okay, wow.
Speaker #1
And so we really wanted to support Chinese wine because it's so rare and interesting, you know, to the wider world. They don't really know much about it. And then, yeah, like I said, the next themes, who knows, after the 2015s, we'll keep on changing things.
Speaker #0
We'll be there for the 2015 for sure. It could be good,
Speaker #1
that one.
Speaker #0
It was a very nice vintage in a lot of places in the world. Exactly. So it's great to rediscover it. And actually, so we started this podcast in 2018, 2019. so I think that 2015 was among the first vintages that we had the opportunity to taste with the the winemakers you know like going to the estates and discussing with them we call it like i have good memories of us in bordeaux at chateau de ferrand for example in saint-emilion and just like tasting the 2015 i think we have a magnum of 2015 from ferrand in france yeah so you know it's it's good memories for us um so 67 pole mall we haven't actually described what is 67 we entered into your role and what you're doing but it's basically a members club in plenty of cities so I know Bordeaux, London Singapore Hong Kong you've mentioned Verbier yes you told me that Melbourne was opening soon yes
Speaker #1
Shanghai as well Shanghai as well and then Bone also no? Bone is coming yes Bone is coming as well that will be a small club but yes we have a property there and in future there will be more sites being announced so they're not official yet they're mostly in asia uh and they're in the kind of cities that you would expect so the big cities the big international cities so there are plans for quite a few more coming nice uh can't
Speaker #0
wait to travel to china and go discover them it's always a always a good place so it's a members club uh so you have to sign up it's a yearly fee or something like that yeah yeah And then you can come basically.
Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. So the advantage for a wine lover is firstly that you get access to this incredible range of wine. So 1,000 by the glass, but we have something like 5,000 by the bottle. We have a great events program. So we're doing winemaker masterclasses, dinners two or three times every week. And again, the range is everything from really high end, super premium Bordeaux and Burgundy and champagne through to. new discoveries from Australia or South Africa. So we really try and cover everything. But another important point is that the wine list is very competitively priced. So you're paying around half what you would pay in a good restaurant or a good hotel. So the whole idea of paying a membership fee is that you get access to this discounted wine.
Speaker #0
Yeah, that's what I saw when I entered here a bit earlier is that you have, so I don't know if you see it on camera, but there are some sparkling wine. I was super impressed by the price. Yes, exactly. Like it's 140, so basically 15 euros.
Speaker #1
and i'm like exactly that is i mean it is it's encouraging people to experiment and when the cost is very reasonable and they think okay i'll just try this because you know, it's very affordable. And then they find they love it and then they try something else. And, you know, our sommeliers are always very happy to recommend something different and unusual. So it's a good relationship.
Speaker #0
And so you were a member of this club when you were in London. And then so you started working for this club.
Speaker #1
Yes.
Speaker #0
Are there, like, did you notice difference between what you expected and what you see between, like, did you have expectations when you started to work with them?
Speaker #1
Um... The answer is yes and no. It was, I had no idea about the realities of the business side. And that has been so interesting. Working with the profit and loss, the kind of logistics, all of the nuts and bolts that make a hospitality business work. I had no idea. Behind the scenes, there's so much more going on than most people realize. You know, you go into the club, you go into any restaurant, you see this beautiful room. Somebody greets you, you sit down, you have a nice meal. And then you don't realize that behind the scenes, there's all of this stuff happening. So that was really interesting. But the fundamental...
Speaker #0
motivation of the club which is to share great wine with great people that's the same in front of house or in back of house and so long as that stays central to the club you know that's what makes it such a great place to work such a great place to be a member um
Speaker #1
so you've also wrote this book wine in the food of uh of asia yeah How did you start it? It was just like you were passionate about this and you're like, okay, let's...
Speaker #0
Well, not really, honestly. I'd never written a book and I also never really written about food and wine matching of any kind. So when the founder of the club, Grant, asked me to write a book, he said, you know, you should... think about doing Asian food. And actually, that was something I knew nothing about. So I was a little bit worried. And it was turned out to be the perfect subject because I'm not an expert. And I was able to learn as I wrote the book. So I was able to explain things from the beginning. And I still don't think I'm an expert. But this book represents a very honest reflection of the research that I did. And I really did try hundreds of combinations. And we did everything at the club in Singapore. So we would put 10 wines on the table, and then we would prepare maybe six or seven dishes. And they were very different. So we'd have some Indian cuisine, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian. And I'd be trying like, I'm going to try a Viognier with this one. Okay, it doesn't work. Now I'll try it with this one. Oh no, maybe I'll try the Sauvignon Blanc here. I mean, it was completely random, but I made a spreadsheet, this crazy, enormous spreadsheet, which it recorded all of my reactions. And then I started to see patterns. And so I started to figure out, okay, this style of wine goes well with this style of food. So I need to figure out why. I try it more times with different variations. So if it worked with Sauvignon Blanc, is it just Loire Sauvignon Blanc? Or does it also work with Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc? And does it work with Oaked Sauvignon Blanc? And I really did take it step by step like that. And the whole book from start to finish was a two-year project because it took me that long to work on how everything paired together. So when I... tell people about the book. The thing I can tell very honestly is that it's, I know that it works for me. These pairings are not theoretical. They have been tested and I've cooked the dishes at home and I've poured the wines and I've served them to friends and I can stand behind them and say, honestly, this works for me. I think I can explain why it works. And then I just leave it to you to decide if it's a good thing.
Speaker #1
for you personally or or not because not everybody has to agree i don't know if the if the process of writing this book looks like a dream or a nightmare yeah i had to i had to experience six different dishes with 20 different wines at the same time so i envy you at the same time like yeah but if you need to do that three times a week for two years it was a lot let me tell you that um i love the fact that it exists now i really i'm very proud of it and i love
Speaker #0
talking about it and showing it to people the writing process that was the nightmare part and and it really was very hard to to figure it out and also to explain it in in language that was clear and comprehensible and
Speaker #1
so basically for for this uh grant so the the founder of 67 had this id yes and he came to see you he said richard you're gonna do it exactly so i had no choice
Speaker #0
And I'm glad because I never would have, under my own initiative, I never would have thought of this. Yeah.
Speaker #1
You were saying, introducing this book, you were saying that you're not an expert. But there is one thing in your career that we didn't mention is that you have also became a master of wine. So a bit earlier, we talked about your wine education, like going through the WICT level. So you told me you graduated from WICT 3 in like 2007 or 9, something like that. Yeah. You told me. But a bit before, you told me that you became a Master of Wine way after that.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
So first, how do you decide to start wanting to go for Master of Wine?
Speaker #0
Well, the honest answer is that... When I came back to the UK after Australia, and I'd started this writing career, and I started to meet some other wine writers that were around my age, and one of them in particular had just signed up for the MW course. And until that point, I had zero intention of ever studying for the Master of Wine. To me, it was something impossible. But when I realized that... I was working alongside these kind of people that would have the, you know, the option to do this. I realized I should probably think about it. So then actually the following year I signed up and the person that I was kind of inspired by, actually, she became a master of wine as well. She's called Rebecca Gibb. She's based in the UK and she's a wine writer. and She became a master of wine just a few years before me. So I have to give her the credit for inspiring me to take the jump. It took a long time because, well, you know, it takes a long time. It took me six years. And when I started on the course, you're right, that it'd been a long time since I'd taken my WSET. So my knowledge was actually not great. I had to work very hard to reach the standard that... you needed to be at but um it was also the best most worthwhile thing i've done in terms of developing my career for sure okay so now i'm worried because we start to interview several master of wine and having them around me so yeah
Speaker #1
it's gonna be you next yeah you should sign up for sure why not yeah because uh six years is a long commitment and it's really hard but One day, maybe, we'd probably love to, but it's a lot of things to discover. Can you tell us a bit more about, so basically, Master of Wine, you need to know everything about how wine is produced around the world.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and that's a key point, what you just said, around the world. You need to be able to talk about all the areas of wine on a global scale. So you have a paper on viticulture, and you need to reference viticulture in very classic regions like Bordeaux, but also in emerging regions like Hebei in China or South Africa or anywhere. And to have that global perspective is very important. But you also need to have the same global perspective for winemaking, for business, for contemporary issues, which means anything that is sort of current, like... A lot of people right now, they're talking about drinking in moderation and avoiding alcohol. And so having a good understanding of all of those things is really vital to being able to pass the exams.
Speaker #1
So it's definitely a lot of work and very large commitment before doing that. And so for you, you said it changed a lot of things in your career.
Speaker #0
It did, yeah. it was Firstly, it gave me the confidence because, you know, when you get that degree, you're in a very small group of people globally and you're in a really great network. So not only do you get great opportunities for work, but you can say to people, look, you know, I have the credibility. I've been through this process. I've spent the time working on it. And it really, you know, it's worth something. So you're able to, you know, charge more. You know, frankly, you are able to increase your earnings because you have a value that is intrinsic to the MW. So yeah, in terms of my career progression, when I passed that exam, it really opened up a big new opportunity.
Speaker #1
You talked about Hubei just before. I think it's a good transition to the wine we are tasting.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
Whole different topic. but so We had the opportunity to just take a glass while recording this podcast. And we had this wine.
Speaker #0
Yes, which is a Tempranillo by a producer called Chapter and Verse. It's 2015 vintage. And actually, something I've, because I've been tasting a lot of Chinese wines recently, and something I've really been pleased to find is that there are some good examples of how well these wines are maturing. And I think this tastes like a classic Tempranillo with bottle age. you know The question is, does it taste Chinese? I don't know. I mean, if I tasted this blind... I would never guess Chinese spontaneously. I think it has the classic characteristics of Tempranillo. And I think it has a sort of fruit ripeness that I would associate with non-European countries. But would I get to China? I have no idea. But it's great winemaking. It's beautifully balanced and it's developing well. And yeah, it's a lovely wine.
Speaker #1
Very lovely. And, you know, so for us, we are discovering Chinese wines. We really wanted to go to tasting, go in China, discover this place. And what I noticed is that for a lot of wines, I think that tasting blind, I can't tell if it's from China or somewhere else.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
But I have never, well, of course, there are some wines I don't like, but most of the times it's technically very, very well done. You know, like it's very... It's actually very good wines. It's like a good Tom Franilo. It's what you would expect from a bottle-aged 2015 Tom Franilo. It's absolutely nice. And so this step is granted, I think, for China now. They are producing very good wines to the international standard of wine. Now the question is, can you do wines that express something differently? Yes. You know, like having your... own identity yeah and i feel like they start to to want to do this but it's the next step in every vineyard it's like first you want to master it then you want to express something so it's like yeah it's like artist you know picasso started by painting
Speaker #0
very conventional things and then he evolved so yeah that's a good that's a good analogy there and we are starting to see some the best producers who are exploring their terroir and making smaller parcels, making micro vinifications, trying to tell the story of their place, not just a variety. And it takes a long time. I think the thing that is most frustrating about developing a wine identity is that the one thing you cannot control is time. And that means time in the bottle for it to mature, but also time for the vines to grow maturity. And also time for you to understand what you can do. A lot of the time when people are starting out in vineyards, they just try anything. You know, you plant Cabernet and Riesling next to each other. And then you figure out that one is successful and one you need to change. And then you realize that your oak regime is too powerful. and it You can only make wine once a year. And so I think it takes an entire lifetime before you really understand. And yeah, at least, right? And then you have hope that your kids will continue. Yeah. So I think that's also why I never wanted to be a winemaker. I don't have the patience to see that process through.
Speaker #1
Yeah, it's a bit of my worry as well. You know, Burgundy took more than 1000 years to look like what it looks like now. So I'm like... I won't have the opportunity to witness that from my living, but it's still a good moment to discover Chinese wines because if you had the opportunity to be there at the start of Burgundy, then it would have been fun to have recordings and places you've been to. So that's fun. Is there anything we haven't talked about? Trying to look into that. I think the book, we've covered it. Carrier is done. Chinese wines we talked about it Master of Wine 67 we talked about it Genesis Robinson we talked about it so it's a we've covered plenty of aspects but are there anything you're thinking about that we didn't cover no I think we've covered a lot there and yeah
Speaker #0
the book the wine yeah we've ticked all the boxes
Speaker #1
I think it's okay I have three last questions that are pretty traditional in this podcast.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
The first one is, do you have a book recommendation about wine? So obviously we recommend you Wine and the Food of Asia. Thank you. Link in description.
Speaker #0
Yes.
Speaker #1
Do you have any other books you would recommend?
Speaker #0
Yeah. So I've just started reading a book called One in a Billion, which is a memoir of Sonal Holland MW, who's India's first master of wine. And she's also a friend. so I helped her with her studies and we've traveled together and we collaborate on different projects. And it's... Her story of how she came from a very humble background in India and worked her way up through the wine industry from nothing. And, you know, her story is really breathtaking. You know, the likelihood of her achieving what she's achieved is so low. And she's worked so hard and achieved so much. You know, she now is a huge social media presence. She has over a million followers on Instagram. She's really... driving wine appreciation in India. And so it's a fascinating story. I think it's very interesting to anybody that loves wine. I think it's super interesting to anyone who's interested in Asia and how wine is working in Asia. But I also think it's a very human story. So I think for people that maybe don't even particularly drink wine very much, they're going to find something in there that is a really interesting reflection of one person just being very determined and very uh
Speaker #1
very ambitious yeah i will uh i will definitely read the book um i understood the the title after you you described yeah this but yeah when you are the only master of wine in a country of 1.3 billion exactly yeah it's crazy and um yeah i think that uh the willingness to go through the wine industry,
Speaker #0
which
Speaker #1
I guess is not that present in India.
Speaker #0
No.
Speaker #1
To like... get out of your situation and achieve something yeah is because you can you can be like okay maybe automotive industry is a bit more likely for you to you know uh have a certain range of income but yeah wine industry is way more i guess unsure in in india so in any case i'd be glad to to read the book um do you have a recent wine tasting that you loved yeah it was a really good wine tasting and the wines were really good.
Speaker #0
And the reason I loved it actually was because of the conversation. This comes back to almost what we were saying at the beginning. So the producer is called Hundred Hills. They're in Oxfordshire in England and they make great English sparkling wine. I'd never met the owner before and I didn't really know the brand. And we tasted the wines and the wines were very good. And we went around the vineyard and it's very beautiful, which, you know, happens a lot. You know, if you're lucky, yeah, you get to visit these places and they're all... they're all great what i really enjoyed is when we sat down and we talked about the business side and we talked about the reality of branding and profit margins and marketing support and distribution and so many producers really don't understand how the reality works in the wine industry and so this was a conversation that was that was very honest it was really useful for me to hear it from a producer's perspective? And so I very much valued that. And like I said, of course, the wines were fantastic. So it was a range of wines with some with very long Lee's age, some Blanc de Noir, some Blanc de Blanc. So it was good to see, you know, he was making these very different expressions. But they were all there for good commercial reasons. You know, they all had a route to market. They all existed, not just because they were great wines, but because they're a good business.
Speaker #1
it's a so so First, thank you for the recommendation. We'll definitely try to find some bottles. And it's also something I witnessed in China. During the tasting we had, the estate had a Blanc de Noir. So still wine, but Blanc de Noir. Okay. And we're like, oh, so you always wanted to do a Blanc de Noir and everything. And they were like, no, but the demand right now for white wine is greater. And we don't have time to plant. Yeah. You know. So we just. do the winemaking in Blanc de Noir and then it's okay and it's fascinating because I think it's definitely not the type of discussions I would have in France with someone producing Blanc de Noir you know you'd be like no it's deeply rooted in the history of my family and whatever yeah and these guys were super pragmatic they were like you know markets want white wine this is a way for me to offer white wine
Speaker #0
I do this and we see so well I'll tell you one more tasting actually that I had recently that was very interesting for similar reasons. was the Chardonnay from Fleur de Bois in La Lande Pomerant. And it's classified as just a Vendor. In fact, no, it's not a Vendor France. It's a Vendor Paid Atlantique. And it's the first Chardonnay from Bordeaux I ever tasted. And it's good. You know, it's great. It tastes like a good village level Burgundy. And the fact that they're trying this new variety for Bordeaux. And this new approach, selling a white wine that is non-native. to Bordeaux region is I think a great innovation especially for France you know it's a big risk doing something like that but it's been successful so they were saying that you know they have three hectares right now but they're going to be top grafting some of their Merlot I think over to Chardonnay because they want to increase the sales of their white wine so that's that's a big change and you know when they're making good wine and if they have demand for it then that's great idea.
Speaker #1
definitely is it so it's fleur de bois fleur de bois So we'll also try to find this. We have good connections in Bordeaux now. So we'll try to find this. Thank you very much for this, Richard. Last question is, who is the next person I should interview?
Speaker #0
Well, this is a very apposite moment because I was just having lunch with him. Eddie McDougall is an Australian winemaker, entrepreneur, founder of the Wynn. signature China Wine Awards, who we've worked with at 67 Palmel. He's just launched a range of his own wines called E.J. McDougall, which are Australian. There's a Margaret River Chardonnay and a McLaren Vale Shiraz and a Grenache and so on. And he has got such a good, balanced perspective of the wine industry. It's really interesting to talk to him because he understands production. He understands marketing distribution. He understands retail. And he was also early in his career, he had a TV show. And so he was very like a very early kind of media personality where he was traveling around the world. It was called The Flying Winemaker and sort of giving these wine advice. He's also just such a lovely, genuine guy. He's got a fascinating story and I think he'd be a good person to talk to.
Speaker #1
Absolutely. Thank you very much for this recommendation. We'll try to catch him if he's in Hong Kong. We'll definitely try to catch him in the next few days. Richard, thank you very much for all this. It was a really nice conversation. Thank you very much for opening up about your career and what you did so far. Can't wait to do the next episode in 20 years. Yeah.
Speaker #0
Well, who knows where we're going to be by then. But yeah, it would be my pleasure.
Speaker #1
For sure. What is true is that it was a very nice moment for me. I hope that you guys enjoyed this moment as well. If you enjoyed it, please share it to at least two persons. Send it to email, WhatsApp, I don't know what, Instagram, whatever. Richard, thanks again and see you next time.
Speaker #0
My pleasure. Thanks,
Speaker #1
Antoine. Perfect.
Speaker #0
All good?

About Wine Makers Show: the wine podcast

What to Expect

In-Depth Interviews: Hear from top figures in the wine world, from renowned vintners to unsung heroes, as they share their experiences, challenges, and secrets to success.
Club Episodes: Explore specific wine topics, from production techniques to tasting tips, in focused, occasional deep dives.
A Journey of Discovery: Whether you're a novice or a connoisseur, we break down the complexities of wine to make it accessible and engaging.

Why Listen?

Connect with Us

Visit winemakersshow.com to get in touch or suggest a guest.
Email Antoine directly at winemakersshow@gmail.com.
Follow the journey on Instagram: @winemakersshow
Join the Academy and learn everything about wine

Tune in to Wine Makers Show and sip on the stories behind every bottle!

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About Wine Makers Show: the wine podcast

What to Expect

In-Depth Interviews: Hear from top figures in the wine world, from renowned vintners to unsung heroes, as they share their experiences, challenges, and secrets to success.
Club Episodes: Explore specific wine topics, from production techniques to tasting tips, in focused, occasional deep dives.
A Journey of Discovery: Whether you're a novice or a connoisseur, we break down the complexities of wine to make it accessible and engaging.

Why Listen?

Connect with Us

Visit winemakersshow.com to get in touch or suggest a guest.
Email Antoine directly at winemakersshow@gmail.com.
Follow the journey on Instagram: @winemakersshow
Join the Academy and learn everything about wine

Tune in to Wine Makers Show and sip on the stories behind every bottle!

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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