Hong Kong’s devotion to heavy Bordeaux reds tends to puzzle wine industry professionals who visit during the summer months. Surely, they argue, this is an impossible climate for something so tannic and heavy in alcohol?
At this point in the conversation somebody usually mentions that most of us spend much of the summer in meatlocker-level air conditioning, so the weather makes less difference than you might think, but the visitors have a point.
Thanks to the smoking ban and a huge increase in the number of restaurants offering outdoor areas, more of us now drink and dine al fresco, and at this time of year wines a bit better matched to warm weather seem called for.
That need not mean switching from red to white, but might entail gravitating from Bordeaux to Burgundy. At May’s Vinexpo Asia-Pacific wine fair I caught up with Michel Rolland, the original flying winemaker, and asked him what he would recommend for summer sipping.
“Strange for a Bordelaise to recommend Pinot Noir, but I like it and now I’m making it,” says Rolland, who not surprisingly recommends the Mariflor Pinot Noir from his own estate in Argentina.
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