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Visiting the world's vineyards gives buyers a taste for something new
There are a million reasons why going on business trips can be laborious for some.  Crowded airports, long queues at security check points, traffic jams, impersonal hotels and never-ending conferences can take a toll.
But, for buyers in the wine industry, business trips mean seeing beautiful countrysides from France to South Africa and California, crisscrossing the rural landscape from one vineyard to another.
They are treated well by the owners, whose hospitality extends to lunches and dinners in addition to tours of their vineyards and an explanation of what they are doing.
With a glass of wine in hand, they are building relationships while enjoying the mild and sunny climate that wine growing regions generally have.
Eric Desgouttes,  fine wine manager at Watson's Wine Cellar, has taken five extended trips this year to three of the major wine growing regions in France - Bordeaux, Burgundy and the Rhone Valley.
He sees five to six vineyards a day on average and the purpose of his visit is twofold - he relays customer feedback to the owners and assesses the quality of the vintage because it can vary from year to year. And he looks for new domains to satisfy increasing demand in wine consumption that existing domains cannot sustain.
Mr Desgouttes is one of four buyers at Watson's Wine Cellar and he is responsible for sourcing fine wine from France.
However, when the samples arrive all four buyers act as a team and do the testing together, overseen by general manager Jeanette Paterson. A majority vote is then needed to approve a sample.
'Our wholesale business has grown 500 per cent over the past three years,' said Mr Desgouttes. 'The economy has surged and wine consumption, particularly in Hong Kong, seems to follow the stock market.'
As people in Hong Kong are becoming more prosperous and interested in wine, many companies, including Watson's Wine Cellar, organise tastings and wine dinners to educate their customers about wine.
'We came to realise that people tend to go for what they know. For most people, 80 per cent of the wines are unknown at the wine shows. These events provide a great way to introduce our customers to some of the lesser known, nevertheless great brands. We want people to stop thinking only chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon. There are many other great wines to discover.'
Sean Robson,  buying manager for food and wine at the speciality stores of the Dairy Farm Company, said that although customers were getting more knowledgeable about wine, the weekly demonstrations were still an essential part of ThreeSixty's  merchandising strategy.
'Our goal is to promote organic wines at ThreeSixty. We recognise that many of our customers - existing wine drinkers - have never tried them. So most of our tastings and demonstrations revolve around our extensive range of organic wines.'
The last week of February is most important to Mr Robson because BioFach, the world's biggest organic trade fair, is held in Nuremberg, Germany.
In 2006, the organic wine exhibition set a record and attracted more than 300 exhibitors from 13 countries which presented 1,129 high-quality organic wines. There is no doubt that Mr Robson is passionate about his job.
'I never do enough travelling in wine. All the countries where wine is produced are beautiful,' Mr Robson said.
For Toby Marion,  director of Golden Gate Wine, a family-run company exclusively sourcing American wine, trading in wine started as a hobby.
Mr Marion was deployed in the mountains of Afghanistan on a Peace Corps mission in the 1970s. 'The only way for me to get alcoholic beverages was to make them.'
In 2003 he commissioned a study and found that American wines only had a 10 per cent market share in Hong Kong, as opposed to the market leading French and Australian wines, with 40 and 20 per cent respectively.
'We felt that if someone comes in and works very hard to provide good products the same way as the other countries, there is space to create value and that is why we decided to focus on the American niche.'
It was not easy to start up a wine business from scratch. Mr Marion worked hard to raise his first 100 contacts through the California Wine Institute, the Napa Valley Vintners Association and the Oregon Wine Board. The company selected 65 wines to start with and this has grown to 250.
'It also took a while to develop a track record or reputation for service. Now if our customers request 500 or 1,000 bottles of wine, we can guarantee to have it delivered within eight, sometimes even six weeks,' Mr Marion said.
Mr Marion and his wife take an extended trip of three to four weeks every summer to visit the American Viticultural Areas  - eight to 10 wine-growing regions spanning the west coast from Santa Barbara to Oregon.
'Over the past four years, we have travelled extensively and managed to visit all our suppliers at least once,' he said.
He firmly believes that moderate wine drinking is healthy because it increases good cholesterol and reduces the bad, keeping the cardiovascular system soft and supple. He thinks it is one of the reasons why Honkongers are shifting from hard spirits and drinking more wine, especially quality wine.
'With the economic boom and the reduction of the import tax from 80 to 40 per cent, we have already seen wine consumption going up significantly,' Mr Marion said. 'Everyone in the industry is hoping for a further reduction because it would be a big benefit to the local population, the tourism, hotel and the restaurant industry.'



A full-bodied job that travels well