HK Baptist claims Left Bank Cup place

Hong Kong Baptist University claimed a narrow victory in the Left Bank Bordeaux Cup in Hong Kong and will now go on to compete in the final at Lafite this summer.

Eight university teams went head to head at the Grand Hyatt to win one of the two places that have been allotted to Asian teams to go on to compete at Château Lafite in the grand final this June.

The competition was hotly contested and HK Baptist scraped in by a single point, with three other universities, including HKU, tied in second place just behind them.

By winning the place, the three-man team also won a HK$50,000 donation from the Commanderie de Bordeaux in Hong Kong, which was announced by its grand maître Vincent Cheung, who was also one of the judges.

The teams were tested on their knowledge of Bordeaux in a question round and then three flights of three wines which were tasted blind. During the blind tasting the contestants were asked to identify which were the youngest or oldest or where they were from.

The Left Bank Cup is organised by the Commanderie du Bontemps and originally only pitted European teams against one another before a more “Americas Cup” style competition was brought in five years ago.

Speaking to the drinks business, the Commanderie’s grand maître and owner of Château d’Issan, Emmanuel Cruse, said that the standard among the competitors was improving even if there was still room for improvement (only one team correctly identified Léoville Barton by its label).

“If we go three or four years back they’ve really improved,” he said. “The final three [teams] were so close it came down to the Sauternes [flight].”

The judging team is now in Shanghai to pick the second Asian team from a line-up of one Singaporean and eight other Chinese universities.

UCLA and MIT have already been chosen from the US and the European universities will compete for the final places at the end of this month.