Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Perfect. Hi, Fongy.

• Speaker #1

  Hi. Lovely to meet you, Antoine.

• Speaker #0

  Thank you very much. Thank you very much for taking this time. I know you've had some long days before these discussions because you've been judging wines here for the last, what, three days?

• Speaker #1

  Four days. Four days. We're on our fourth day, yes.

• Speaker #0

  On your fourth day of tasting, so...

• Speaker #1

  Time goes so quickly.

• Speaker #0

  So it's the perfect time for me to ask the hardest question possible. So we'll discuss about plenty of things, about Chinese wines, about your career, about wine education in China as well. But first, can you introduce yourself?

• Speaker #1

  Okay, well, my name is Fongi Walker, and I'm based in Beijing, China, although I'm not Chinese, but have been living there for about 20 years now. I was the first master of wine, actually, to be living in China, mainland China, and that's been a really exciting part of my career. which is generally as someone who educates about wine, I always say, I do not make it. You know, I feel a bit, I do not grow grapes. I do not do the hard work of fermentation. I do not even sell it. All I do is tell people about it and gossip and talk, which is a very enjoyable job. But we do that from a company that I founded with my husband in Beijing called Dragon Phoenix Wine Consulting. And we from...

• Speaker #0

  beginnings of about 20 years ago we now have wine students all over china so it's lovely lots of wine babies as you could say that's a that's a wonderful journey so um you're not from china uh you were born in the uk right it

• Speaker #1

  gets more complicated i was born in malaysia okay um my mother is originally from mainland china my father is english and i grew up in a lot of places but generally I regard like... Canada, UK, Hong Kong, all places that I'm very comfortable with.

• Speaker #0

  And you were always interested in wine. So if you were born in Malaysia, I guess wine was not that present.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, goodness, no. Yeah. So we left Malaysia quite soon. I think due to my father's love for wine. No. Actually, we always grew up with wine in the house because although my mother was from the mainland, she went over to England very early, the early 60s. And so she got used to drinking wine because, you know, everyone drank sherry and mort and all those. And she really enjoyed it. And so I grew up with a mother who cooked Chinese food, but we always had wine on the table. So it's quite unusual, I think, that sort of background. And I think also the interesting thing is I loved food and I wasn't that much into wine. I loved the idea of it. Um, but I didn't actually start to get serious about studying wine until I was at university and my boyfriend, now husband, said, we have a blind tasting team. And I said, that is really weird. I said, who locks themselves in the room and tastes wine and talks about it? But he persuaded me and I loved it. I loved it. I never realized that there were all these different varietals in all these different countries that make amazingly different and absorbing wines.

• Speaker #0

  So how was it at university, this blind tasting team? Because I guess if you know not that much about wine, like blind tasting is really, I guess, something for the niche guys or, you know, like you need to be in. I love blind tasting wines because then I try to find, I'm like trying to guess, but it could be something else and everything. But you If you don't know anything about wine and you're blind-tased, it can be very intimidating or it can be sometimes disappointing because you're like, what the hell is this? Oh, yeah. I mean,

• Speaker #1

  they were so rude to me. So my husband finally convinced me to go. And it was basically about eight white guys sitting in a small room in Cambridge being really snotty to me about wine. I remember because I hadn't heard of Sauvignon Blanc. And there was a Sancerre and I said, well, this is a really high acid, weird, you know, and they were like, oh, don't you know that Sauvignon Blanc is Sancerre grape? And I said, no. And they're really rude and snotty. But I never get intimidated by that. Because you shouldn't be intimidated by not knowing something, because we can always learn it. I think you should be intimidated if you have the wrong mindset. I think you can be intimidated. or treated badly if you have the wrong attitude. But I would never let lack of knowledge intimidate one, because one can always improve a lack of knowledge. And so when they said that to me, I said, all right, yeah, I'm going to show you. I'm going to look up Sauvignon Blanc. I'm going to find out about it. And I'm going to become a master of wine. So no, I didn't quite start at that level. But it was really enjoyable because by the second year, I became the team captain. Because after they said that to me, I never let someone try and push me down for a lack of knowing about something. So my first reaction was, right, yeah. I don't know this. They're completely right. But that doesn't mean I'm a bad person or a stupid person. It just means I haven't read the right books or checked the right materials. And that's easily remedied. You just open a book and that's the mirror to the world. And then you just start from there.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, becoming a master of wine is kind of a revenge.

• Speaker #1

  The very sweet revenge. Although very expensive and very difficult. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  But it's always something like... attitude versus knowledge. You know, you can teach someone what's the good attitude, like knowledge is not a problem. But someone with the wrong attitude, you can't do anything about it. And you just let this person go.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. I mean, if you let, if you take aboard the criticism of something that's not your fault, that's just something that you've never come across, you know, how you can't internalize that because it just means you haven't opened that book. And you can't be criticized for that, you know? It's just something you don't know about. And if the trouble is, how do you react to that? You can either open your eyes and go, there's so much of this wonderful world that I don't know about, that I need to know more about, you know? Or you can say, oh, I'm going to let them, like, oppress me, and oh, woe is me, and they're so horrible to me. And I never thought to react that way. To me, the world is a continually learning experience. Um, it's a bit crazy, but I always love it if I learn a new thing every day.

• Speaker #0

  I agree. And I, I enjoy so much being a beginner in something that, that's so fun. And you realize, you know,

• Speaker #1

  completely nothing about it. Yeah. It's really fun.

• Speaker #0

  So, so you become, um, the captain, the, the, for the second year. Can you, um, so I have a few friends who did like blind tasting competition and everything, but it's, um. I'm not sure the audience knows how it works. Can you give us a bit more detail about what it's like to be a university team of blind tasting?

• Speaker #1

  How to drink for your university. I think it's a very, very strange thing to do. And I think it's telling that we don't do it for food. We only do it for wine, which I always regard as a bit strange. Because after all... food is much more part of our everyday life. But for wine, it is a strange competition where you put the people into the room, you have dead silence, you have a little scoreboard to fill out. You're not rating wine. You're not saying this is a gold, this is an outstanding wine. You're just saying, what are the points of this wine that lead me to deduce that it's from this region, it is from this variety, it is this year. And then it all gets collected, marked, and then you either have an enormously nice time winning or you have to go back and study more.

• Speaker #0

  And did you win a lot?

• Speaker #1

  Yes. Actually, what happened is after that very bad first session where people were quite rude about what I didn't know about wine, I said to my husband, I said, this is the trouble with this kind of thing. It's so off-putting and it's so arrogant. And it's confusing ignorance, not knowing something, just being unaware with being stupid or unable. And I said, I bet you we have a lot of good tasters out there who are intimidated just because they don't know about it. So I said, why don't like we got together and we spent the summer writing a handbook of all the varieties of the world, like the famous ones and what they generally tasted like. tips on how to find what these wines were. And so when it came to the next year where I had become captain, because I'd scored the highest mark in the competition, we did say to everyone, zero knowledge needed. We will provide a guide to all of the grapes. We just invite everyone. And it was fantastic because it went from this somewhat small, cliquey group. Yeah. And suddenly we had this one wonderful Indian boy. He was Sikh from Canada. He had never tasted wine in his life. But I said, come on, just, you know, try it. He came with his sister and they attended and he just got the bug. And he was a member of the team, university team, within three months of having his first sip of wine. And that to me is so meaningful.

• Speaker #0

  And you must find the same pleasure a few years later when starting to educate people in China about wine. I guess you have kind of the same thing. Culturally interested people because they drink tea, they have this mindset of having the ingredients that matter. But a culture of wine that must have been kind of lacking 20 years ago.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, yes.

• Speaker #0

  And so like trying to do this first step and opening the wines to the people.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, I think it's something that I have really enjoyed. I love teaching wine everywhere in the world, but I really, really enjoy it in China because... I grew up in a cross-cultural family. And for me, it's such an important part of mixing Western and Chinese culture and letting people understand the broader world. Because I think as humans, we all develop a better relationship with other humans, the more we understand of each other's cultures, of each other's ways of looking at things. And so for me, anything that increases cross-cultural communication is something that works as a force to create a more harmonious relationship between people. Because people only hate each other when there's fear and mistrust and not understanding what they mean by their cultures. And wine is a very small part of that, very insignificant, but it's really fun to talk about, you know, why Did wine become so important in Italy and France and these countries? How do they view it? How can you view it? How can you, as a Chinese person, bring it into your life? Because you're going to treat it a slightly different way. So it's just kind of fun to talk about things like that.

• Speaker #0

  Did you go to China after university? Yes, I did. Were you already a master of wine at that point? Oh, no,

• Speaker #1

  I had not been introduced. I got to Cambridge to do my PhD, which is where I got introduced to the whole wine tasting thing. But before that, I had done a master's in classical Chinese and a bachelor's. So you end up going to university in China for your year abroad. I did actually drink wine, Chinese wine. It wasn't very good, but we were students. We had no standards whatsoever.

• Speaker #0

  was a bit of time ago i guess yeah that was in the

• Speaker #1

  1990s so that was a long time ago but uh it was great it was great and to see how far china's come particularly from the

• Speaker #0

  90s is is absolutely awe-inspiring and incredible so how did you get into uh going for master of wine like were you working in the wine industry were you writing about wine already or i think i was completely insane i think that's one of the uh But like your career, so you end up, you end Cambridge with your PhD. No,

• Speaker #1

  I didn't.

• Speaker #0

  Okay.

• Speaker #1

  I did six years at Cambridge. I got a Master of Philosophy in MPhil. And I was writing or supposed to be writing my PhD. I got terribly distracted because I was doing a lot of teaching of classical Chinese translation. And I realized that I wasn't going to make a good professor because actually I don't like sitting in the library all by myself. I tend to want to go out to the tea room and gossip and share stuff with people. And when you're the only student who's doing ancient Chinese literature, you don't have much of a chance to go out and gossip with anybody. Whereas I loved teaching undergraduates. and encouraging them and hoping that they would surpass me and like opening their eyes to how lovely classical Chinese poetry is. So I was getting more and more enmeshed into teaching and realized that actually I'm a much better teacher than researcher. And when my husband finished his PhD, he was given a job opportunity in mainland China at a very good university. And I said, take it. And actually, when I first moved to China with my husband, I ended up teaching English, which I love. I mean, it's a lovely little students. It was really fun. And then while I was doing that, I thought, well, why don't I start teaching wine? You know, everyone wants to learn about wine. No one knows about wine. So why don't I start this as a company and see how far I get? So still around. Yeah. Guess it worked.

• Speaker #0

  Went a long way. Yeah, yeah. So you start this company. It was already in Beijing?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Okay. So you start this company and it's like you just opened the doors of your flat.

• Speaker #1

  See, the first time we opened the class, it took us, I would say, eight weeks to find four students. Like, it was just minimal. And I kind of thought, what are we doing? But it's gotten easier and easier. And more and more people want to learn about wine. So it opens doors to them that I think a lot of people don't have the chance to discover by themselves.

• Speaker #0

  So you started this wine education journey in the late 90s?

• Speaker #1

  Sorry. No, it was in 2007, actually. So 20 years ago, I guess, by next year. And it was very difficult because, of course, in the West, wine education is very much targeted a lot towards people in the industry, people who need to know more about wine to sell it. Whereas in my experience in China, we have had less students who are in industry. We have far more students who are actually just interested in wine. They would take our class like you would take a yoga class.

• Speaker #0

  Which is super different.

• Speaker #1

  Or a baking class or a tea appreciation class, you know. So they do it to widen the scope of their lives.

• Speaker #0

  Which is super different because when you see the standard way of tasting. the standard way of approaching a region knowing that it's a this uh grape variety this climate this uh thing it's very structured and and kind of one-way thing whereas if you want to more like widen your horizon you tend to want to do like different tastings i guess of the same thing but in different places in the world different vintages like you're more here to open

• Speaker #1

  your mind than for anything else yeah it is a case of that and sometimes i get very frustrated teaching courses which have the rigid tasting systems and stuff, because I'm just like, the most important thing is what joy does it bring to you, not whether it has high acid or not. I said, actually, that's irrelevant. I said, tasting is all about understanding how the wine enters your mouth, what it feels like to you, what it brings to you in your heart, especially if you're not in the trade. If you're not in the trade, you have no need to describe a wine as Medium bodied with high but refreshing acidity. You know, nobody talks like that. It's like, oh, that's a smashing, really good piece of bubbly wine, you know, or whatever.

• Speaker #0

  I didn't write that in my tasting exam. So, like, you've been doing education, wine education in China for almost 20 years. I guess the profile. of the people following this wine education. Also, maybe the beginner's level must have definitely changed over the last 20 years.

• Speaker #1

  Oh my God, hugely. The first wine course we taught, actually no one had drunk a Sauvignon Blanc. And it was even hard to buy one in China. And now, especially our higher level students, they sometimes bring wine that astonishes me. We're like, how did... did you know about this how did you get to know and they're just like oh you know a little bit reading little bit friends recommended i'm like wow it's incredible we do not have many students now who turn up having never tasted a sauvignon blanc or a chardonnay or a cabernet those people are much they don't exist anymore it's

• Speaker #0

  um so i don't know if it's the same in mainland china but in hong kong what i've been the most impressed about is this level of knowledge from the people I meet.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  And, you know, I guess it's because from France, we are a bit, like, arrogant about our knowledge on wine. You know, we're like, yeah, we're French. Of course, we know wine. Born enough. Yeah. But, like, people don't really take wine. Some people take wine education in France, but it's not...

• Speaker #1

  It's not common.

• Speaker #0

  But it's not that common. And actually, in Hong Kong, a lot of people I meet have really serious credentials in wine, and they are, like, really into it. They often taste, they have like really, and they taste wine from all around the world. And so they have a knowledge about wine that's absolutely crazy to me.

• Speaker #1

  And it always makes my students surprised. I said. They said, oh, well, to study wine, I should go to France. And I said, that's a place you don't want to go. I said, you don't want to go to Italy. You don't want to go to France. You don't want to go to Spain. Because I said, if you go to those countries to study wine, you only study the wine really of that country. And even you only study the wine of that region. I mean, how many people do you know in Burgundy who have drunk Bordeaux?

• Speaker #0

  No, not that much.

• Speaker #1

  I mean, how many people do you know in Bordeaux who drink Burgundy? Maybe more. Like you go to Piemonte in Italy and nobody has drunk Cithelium wine. So I said, the trouble if you go to these places which have this very proud cultural history of wine is that it's tied into identity, not knowledge. And I said, but you're in China. So you're getting exposed to a far wider range of wines and a far wider range of varieties. So I said... Don't expect to go to France and stop someone on the street and they will know the difference between Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc. I said, if you said to them Chino and Burgoyne, then they'll understand it maybe. But they don't need to study it. And I said, I always say to my students, it's kind of like tea. I said, if I were to ask you what your favorite tea is so you could answer. you know, Longjing, or you could answer Tieguanyin. But if I started to ask you, well, what production area did you like it from? Do you think that high altitude influences? And most people would start to go, and then you're like, but how did you learn about tea? How did you learn that? And most of it's like, oh, it's what my mom and dad drank. I said, that's the same position that wine is. And generally, if you're from the south of China, you will drink. You know, from the east coast of China, you will be very familiar with the Longjing's, right, and the Biluochun's sort of, you know, sort of teas. But if you live in Yunnan, you'll be more familiar with the Pu'er styles, right? You live up in Beijing, you probably drink Chrysanthemum tea most of the time. And I said, it's the same way that people in France will drink different wine according to where they're from. And it's not because they've studied it. because That's what people of the area drink.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, it's tradition.

• Speaker #1

  It's a completely different way of looking at something.

• Speaker #0

  So the profile of your students changed over these 20 years, but the profile of Chinese wines completely changed. Completely changed.

• Speaker #1

  I mean, the first time I judged a Chinese wine competition was 2006.

• Speaker #0

  Here in... No,

• Speaker #1

  that was in Shandong.

• Speaker #0

  Okay.

• Speaker #1

  And they gave us three white wines and they were all completely faulty. And I said, but these wines have problems. They said, judge it. And I said, but, and they said, judge it. And it was just awful. And I mean, it was just not high quality. And then we've seen over the years, I mean, I think for me, the driving force behind the quality rise in Chinese wine. has definitely people, has been the wineries opened by people who do it for passion. They're not doing it particularly for money. They're usually rich from another background, but they're doing it to create the best wine in the world. And I think that's really important. And I think that is directly correlated with the rise of the quality, average quality of wine in China.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, on our side, we've been just once in a Chinese vineyard yet, but it was in Shandong as well. Our first time tasting Chinese wines in the vineyard was in Yantai, actually.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  And we actually had an amazing time there. The wines are really good.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, they're lovely wines.

• Speaker #0

  So you can see that they are still trying to search for a proper identity of the plate. But the wines are super good. So, like, not faulty, actually. So it was an amazing experience to us.

• Speaker #1

  And you also see that with, we have a much better, new generation of winemakers who are much more sensitive to the grapes, who perhaps grew up with more great wine or interesting wine around them. They have a wider tasting ability. Because one of the problems with Chinese wine is... A lot of the first generation, due to the way Bordeaux was viewed, they were always trained by the University of Bordeaux. And it was like you had to go there. Is that the right place to go if you're a Chinese winemaker, if you're a Chinese grape grower? Actually, the climate in Bordeaux, the situation, the soil is so different. I made a speech very early on, I think 2010 or something in Ningxia. And I said, I don't know why you're all looking to an area that's moderate climate, maritime, whose chief problems are, you know, wet. And I said, you're in Ningxia. You're a super high altitude.

• Speaker #0

  You're in the middle of the land.

• Speaker #1

  You're in the middle of the land. You're nowhere near the ocean. I said, why aren't you going to Argentina and learning about wine from them? Because actually their wine's pH, their wine's taste, their wine's growing conditions are much more similar to yours. But it didn't occur to them because... So I think... what's happened now is that Chinese wines and wineries and winemakers have realized they don't need to copy, that they can actually try and discover what is the best wine. Because I passionately believe, and a lot of wine experts would not agree with me, but I don't think that climate and soil are to do with quality. I think climate and soil determine what style of wine you can make. You know, I wouldn't plant Pinot Noir in Bordeaux. And you could, you could plant it in Chateau Lafitte or Petrus, but it won't be very, very nice. And there's an example. So how can you say that Petrus has the greatest soil? It doesn't. It has a good, the greatest soil for its style. And if you plant a German Riesling, like a Riesling vine there. it would not be very nice, right? So it doesn't mean there's something about Petrus that makes it the greatest vineyard in the world. It's not. It's the greatest vineyard. It can be considered a great vineyard for the grapes it chooses to plant and the wines it makes. So for me, climate and soil are just, you have to find the right style of wine. Quality comes from people, nothing to do with... climate soil the you know the surroundings if you put enough heart into it you can make great wine and and for me i always tell my students actually the so-called terroir the soil and the climate of south france of areas like terrasse de la zac la clap i mean la clap is really nice i mean you look at that la clap and you go oh my god that's that's you That's something special. And actually, if you look at their heat, their climate cycle, their conditions for growing Cabernet are much better than Bordeaux. Most of the South of France is much better for growing grapes. Why is it not? Because it's a poor area. You know, it's always been traditionally farmers who are struggling to live. If you're struggling to live, who can afford to buy oak barrels? Who can afford to invite critics? Who can be aristocrats and sink money into stuff? Great wine for me comes from money. And that's another reason Chinese wine has improved. Because China has a lot more money now. And so our problem in China isn't quality. We have the people, we have the ambition, we have the will, and we have the investment. to make great wine. The question is, what kind of great wine do we make? How do we express and find the styles that should come from the Chinese climate, the Chinese soil? And that's going to take a lot of time and experimentation. Today, we had a great Sauvignon Blanc. It was fantastic. It was on par with the world's great Sauvignon Blancs. But there's almost none of that in China because nobody plants it, because nobody experiments with that. That's our problem. Who's to know 50 years from now, some of the world's greatest Sauvignon Blancs may come from China. So perhaps that's a style that we need to consider. So for me, style and quality come from completely different facets. I mean, you know, I mean, South of France wine. in the 1960s, and now you've got people like Master Domaz Kazak.

• Speaker #0

  You've got Chateau Hospitalet, which are making world-class wines. It's not like the soil changed or the climate changed. The people changed. So I think in China, that's what we've got to aim for.

• Speaker #1

  Plus, it's also a question of time because when you start a vineyard, I guess you're the first one to make wine, taste, improve, change things. But you can only know... if the grape is adapted, if the people are the good people after a few years.

• Speaker #0

  Or after a few generations.

• Speaker #1

  And even after a few generations. So,

• Speaker #0

  you know,

• Speaker #1

  I guess it's, but it's something we've really felt that this quest for identity, for quality.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  But I think it comes after a few years of doing kind of Bordeaux style or, but we can see that it's disappearing. The last tasting we've done is disappearing.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. I mean, I personally, I mean, going back to comparing a lot of Chinese growing areas to Argentina, I'd love to see Malbec.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Because that's a grape that seems to express extremely well in desert-like or, you know, that sort of, you know, dry, high altitude conditions. I mean, you know, there's so many things that we have yet. I mean, sparkling wine.

• Speaker #1

  Sparkling. We've tasted some. amazing sparkling Chinese.

• Speaker #0

  There you go. Who's to say that, you know, it couldn't be one of the future areas that makes great sparkling wine?

• Speaker #1

  Breaks my heart to say it, but yeah, I love this.

• Speaker #0

  Does it break your heart?

• Speaker #1

  Because, you know, champagne is not far from... Oh,

• Speaker #0

  I don't think champagne has to be scared of anyone for the time being. I don't think... You know, the English make a lot of noise about their sparkling wine. No, no,

• Speaker #1

  this I'm not worried.

• Speaker #0

  I don't think the champignons are sort of, you know, lying awake in their beds. And also the other thing not to worry about China is China has very small production of wine. And even though the vineyard area is big, you know, 80 to 90% of the vineyards are for eating or raisins. They're not for making wine, which is very different because if you look at France, I think it runs at 99. 99.5%

• Speaker #1

  of the vineyards are all for wine.

• Speaker #0

  I always make a joke when I teach my students that. I said, it's because the French don't do as much fruit as the Chinese. But it actually economically makes sense too because you think about Chinese culture. In the West, if you ever told anyone that you would buy a kilogram of grapes for 15 euros, Most people in Europe could be like, what? But in China, in Japan, in Hong Kong, you go to the city supers or the Japanese department store and you can buy a melon for $100.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, true. Because it's imported and it's, yeah.

• Speaker #0

  And in China, giving that gift of really high-end Chinese table grapes is a sign of respect. So in a way, I don't see the area of wine grapes increasing because a good farmer can actually make a very good living out of making beautiful table grapes.

• Speaker #1

  Which is not the case in Europe. That's the case in Europe. No,

• Speaker #0

  I would give up. You know, no one in the West pays those prices for fruit.

• Speaker #1

  Would better ferment it and wine.

• Speaker #0

  That says something.

• Speaker #1

  So you talked about this Sauvignon Blanc. We are currently at Wynn Macau for the Wynn Chinese Wine Awards. Yes. So you've been basically tasting wines these last few days. Can you tell us a bit more what it's like to be a judge in such a competition and in an awards?

• Speaker #0

  Well, first of all, I'm going to be don't have white teeth. It is exhausting. Many of my friends always think, oh, you have such a great job. You just go off and you taste wine. I'm like, by the time you're on your 100th wine or, you know, your 80th wine of the day and you've done big flights of big Cabernet, you don't feel so good. But it's been a wonderful, wonderful few days of judging here at Wynn because We've had such variety in the wines. I think the variety of wines is growing. And it's really fun to come across flights of wines that you never even knew China was making or things that astonish you or excite you. And I have to say that doing a wine competition in Wynn Palace is very easy because the service is amazing. Like I've done wine competitions in small huts in the middle of a village in Australia. where there's not even enough heating. And one competition, my husband ended up having to wash the glasses. But here you certainly get very, and it's very nice because then you don't have to worry about stuff. So all of the flights are set out beautifully. All of the numbers are on the glasses. The computer system works really, really well. So I think that this kind of competition gets very good results because the judges... can concentrate on nothing but judging the wine. You know, they don't have, you know, even... I've done one competition that are... It's very difficult to survive daily. You know, you're like, there's nowhere to wash. You know, you can't get your clothes washed. You're like living out of a suitcase in this very cold motel in the middle of nowhere. But here it makes it very easy to stay focused. And to do the job very clearly, which has been very enjoyable.

• Speaker #1

  And so how does that work? So basically you have like, I don't know, 15, 20 glasses of wine in front of you. Yeah,

• Speaker #0

  depending on how many, you might just have one glass of wine if it's a rare type of wine or not a common one. So you can have anything from one glass to sort of 12 glasses in front of you.

• Speaker #1

  And then you just like write, I don't know, like 9 out of 10 next.

• Speaker #0

  No, you have to write notes. You have to write, you know, this wine. I mean, try not to be too rude. Most of the time you go, you know, this wine has a little bit aggressive tannins. The acid is not well balanced. Or you say, this is a beautiful, harmonious wine. Then you need to score it out of 100 on the 100 point system.

• Speaker #1

  So you have different criteria as well?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. So bronze would be 85 to 89. A silver would be 90 to 94. And a gold is 95 and above. And you do it in silence in your group.

• Speaker #1

  Okay.

• Speaker #0

  The groups are usually four people or five people, depending on the competition. This one is four. And then when everyone's finished entering it on the system, then the panel leader can look at everyone's scores. You can see everyone else's scores. And then you come to a conclusion and you discuss.

• Speaker #1

  Okay.

• Speaker #0

  Because some people... you know, especially judges that are not very well experienced, they tend to use their personal, oh, I really like this wine. And you're like, yeah, you like it, but is it a good wine?

• Speaker #1

  Is it a good expression? You know,

• Speaker #0

  I love McDonald's ice cream. Is that a good ice cream?

• Speaker #1

  The machine is always broken for me.

• Speaker #0

  But man, you know, I love a good Oreo McFlurry, you know. So I said, you got to be careful of that. And that's why it's... always good to judge in groups because it tends to cancel out, you know, the extreme views. And the panel chair, the person who leads it, should be someone with a good enough experience and a good enough personality to be able to bring everyone together. So you're not tasting wine once. You're tasting it again when you talk about the wine.

• Speaker #1

  And so at the end of this panel, like after discussing you know

• Speaker #0

  you must arrive to a conclusion together like yeah okay we never like it when there's a wine i mean of course there's always someone who goes i can't believe it but if there's only one of them and the rest of the group has said no we believe that this is that level they have to accept it because i think it's also arrogance if you act like that because nobody's perfect yeah nobody's taste is better than exactly you you know everyone is human everyone makes mistakes. And the thing I like about this system is that because you're doing it as a discussion. So our job as co-chairs is to go between groups so we can say, oh, in that group, they had a similar wine. And I think the quality was comparable to yours. And so I'll let you know, you know, that that group gave it a gold medal. So maybe you should look at that wine. for that kind of quality.

• Speaker #1

  And so you have this difference table. So four to five person by table. And then you all taste the same wines between the table. And then you do the same job again.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  But a level, kind of a level above with different co-chairs or?

• Speaker #0

  No, no, no. The co-chairs walk around. We walk around and we float around and we have a glass and then we get called over. Please, please, we're having an argument over this. And then you come in and you're like, oh, yeah, I think, I think. And you look at their comments and you go, oh, I think Tim's right here. I don't know about you, Susan. I think maybe, you know, you got tricked a bit by the sugar or something like that. Yeah. So generally people who are co-chairs or chairs are people like Andrew Coyard. And he's got so many years of experience.

• Speaker #1

  Years of experience.

• Speaker #0

  You know, it's just beautiful tasting with him, you know, because he brings so much experience to the table. So experience is important in this kind of thing.

• Speaker #1

  I guess 100%. I think we are kind of close to the end of this interview to stick to timing. But it was an amazing conversation we had together. I think we learned a lot of things about the evolution of the consumers in China. Yeah. Evolution also of the vineyards of China.

• Speaker #0

  China, you know, just wait another three years, everything will change.

• Speaker #1

  But you know, I heard an interview recently, and Xi Jinping was talking about China as an elephant. And if you're blind and you touch an elephant, everyone has a different reality. Like someone might touch a leg and think it's a column. Someone might touch the belly and think it's a wall. And I think it's kind of the same with tasting wine.

• Speaker #0

  It's exactly the same, yeah.

• Speaker #1

  You need to experience it and go to the vineyard. So I hope we'll have the opportunity to go there. more and more yeah i have to go climbing the mountains in shangri-la yeah yeah definitely something we can do like going to unan and stuff would be amazing um i have three last questions that are pretty traditional the first the first one is uh

• Speaker #0

  do you have a book recommendation for me um that is a very difficult question for me because i adore books but what i like best about books about wine is the ones that bring culture together. with wine. Because I study wine not because I want to, you know, because wine is everything. Wine is science. It is art. It is culture. It's everything that makes us human. So I really love books that bring together human culture with wine. So I love things like Hugh Johnson's story of wine, you know, because wine is all about the story. There's another one I was thinking of, which is beautiful, which is a book on wine and war. And it's the stories of the Second World War and the First World War. And I mean, these are wonderful stories. I prefer those kind of books to the more technical. Because for me, wine is part of being human.

• Speaker #1

  Next question. Do you have a recent tasting that you loved and a wine that you would basically recommend?

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, that for me is almost impossible. to answer.

• Speaker #1

  Just a recent one,

• Speaker #0

  like one you had last week. Because to me, it's always like asking what your favorite food is. I think if you can say what your favorite food is, you lack imagination because it so much depends on the atmosphere and the size. Some things that have stood out in Chinese wine is recently, I tasted with my students, So I ordered it for class. is we had the recent release of the higher level sparkling wine from the Shandong project in Ningxia, you know, which normally, which started off its life by producing very entry-level wines, and now they're trying to really up their game. And I was so pleased with it. I just thought, you know, this is delicious. My students were going, man, this is not almost like champagne, sorry. But they were like, and I just thought how wonderful that they're doing this. You know, I wouldn't say it tasted like a top champagne, but the whole fact that they're trying to do this really moved me. I thought it was a great idea.

• Speaker #1

  We'll try to have a look if we can find it. Yeah,

• Speaker #0

  it's called Etoile.

• Speaker #1

  Etoile.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  And finally, my last question is, who is the next person I should interview?

• Speaker #0

  Goodness me. There are so many people, but I am aware that you're based in Hong Kong. So in order to... to actually, actually, no, I'm going to make you fly. There is a very, very fascinating woman, Chen Zong, Miss Chen, who runs a winery called Tian Sai. in Xinjiang. I admire her so much. A big plane. Yeah. Make you fly. Make you fly about as far as you can go. But it is, Xinjiang is incredible. It is, if you have not seen Xinjiang, you have not experienced life. It is the most magnificent, mind-blowing place in China for me. I also love Xinjiang because as someone who's caught between East and West, I look like I'm at home there. I'm not normally regarded as a native anywhere. But what I love about Chenzong is that for me, Xinjiang is a hard place. It is a place of extremes, of deserts, and it's a hard culture because you got to be tough to survive there. And she is a woman who just set out. to make a winery, Tianzai, that encapsulated her dreams for this small corner of Xinjiang. And she is fascinating because she is the tiger mom of wine. And I think she's such a figure. You know, one minute I'm half terrified and the other half I want to hug her. And you can go there, get some cooking lessons by her chefs. I learned how to make the local bread. Very good. Bit of roast lamb. And talk with her because I think she brings, as a strong woman involved in wine, I think she really shows what you can do when you have a will and you can turn a desert into one of the best places to make high quality wine in Xinjiang.

• Speaker #1

  We'd definitely love to go there and it would be amazing to spend time there. We tasted a few wines from Xinjiang and it's definitely the type of place that... produces amazing things.

• Speaker #0

  And the food is really fun. Really fun food.

• Speaker #1

  Can't wait to go there. Fungi, thank you very much for taking the time. It was an amazing moment with you. I hope we're going to have the opportunity to do an episode two in a few years in the future.

• Speaker #0

  Hopefully without the purple tongue. The worst thing about being interviewed after a wine competition is that your entire mouth is stained. Never mind. It's honorable.

• Speaker #1

  Thank you very much for this. If you like this interview, don't forget to share it. Share it to people who need to discover Chinese wines. Like it. Share it around you. Feng Yi, thanks again. And see you soon.

• Speaker #0

  Thank you. That was lovely. Cheers.

• Speaker #1

  Nice. Thank you.

• Speaker #0

  Try to stick to timing.