The man behind Hong Kong’s wine revolution

 David Webster joined Watson’s Wine in 1971 and was at the forefront of introducing wine to the city when everyone was still drinking Cognac and wearing flares. He speaks to db HK about the dramatic changes the wine market has undergone over the last 40 years.

David Webster in his office in Central with a glass of his beloved Bourgogne Blanc

Imagine a bottle of 1970 Petrus for HK$299 (£25) or hosting lavish events in Hong Kong’s Hilton Hotel where 1966 Lynch Bages and 1961 Chateau Latour flows in abundance and guests get drunkenly wheeled out to the hotel lobby in a bubble bath.

These wine-fuelled memories are fondly remembered by David Webster, the man at the coalface of Hong Kong’s burgeoning wine importing industry as director of the wine division at Rémy China & Hong Kong, an offshoot of the Rémy Martin group.

In the days of the early 1970s shortly after Webster arrived in Hong Kong to manage Watsons Wines, Cognac was the only thing to be seen drinking and restaurants all over the city resounded with the clinks of Cognac on the rocks. At that time, Cognac consumption was about 400,000 cases a year while the wine market absorbed just 100,000 cases.

“Wine gradually started filtering into people’s consciences around then,” says Webster speaking to db in his large and airy office in Central. “But chiefly among the European expatriates. Interestingly, there wasn’t the ‘red obsession’ so synonymous with Hong Kong today. From the mid 1970s to 1980s, people were drinking Sancerre and Pouilly Fumé plus the ubiquitous Blue Nun and Deinhard Green Label. It wasn’t really until the mid 1980s that wine drinking became a serious pastime.”

Under Webster’s keen eye for “highly sellable” wines and as-yet-unknown cult brands, Hong Kong’s wine landscape altered forever with Torres, Krug, Louis Latour, Mondavi and Petrus launched throughout the 1970s and Wolf Blass, Leeuwin Estate, DRC, Domaine Leflaive, Egon Muller and Opus One taking off in the spandex—clad 1980s. It was also when TV and magazine advertising entered the public sphere, and Webster launched a series of successful wine adverts in the SCMP and the Standard.

David at a lunch on the Peak with Robert and Margarit Mondavi during the 1997 handover weekend

In 1986, Watsons pulled out of the relationship with Rémy and its portfolio of two retail shops, named Rémy Fine Wines gradually expanded to eight outlets by the late 1990s under the leadership of Webster’s colleague, KK Wong, resulting in an annual sales volume of 1.5m bottles by the year of Hong Kong’s handover in 1997.

Rémy then turned its attention internationally, and it was in the early 1980s when Webster was brought on with Rémy as its international product manager for Dynasty Wine – a collaboration between Rémy Martin and the municipal authorities of Tianjin and the first joint contract between China and a foreign company.

“This was an incredibly exciting project –  to produce a Chinese wine for the international audience. We launched it in 1982 with much fanfare and press attention and then progressed to TV advertising which was rare in those days. At that time, China couldn’t export wines to overseas markets so Dynasty was sent to Hong Kong and we re-exported the brand to Canada, US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan and throughout south-east Asia.”

Dynasty became one of the iconic wines to drink and is still going strong, though today is has branched out into producing reds.

Now, it seems hardly believable that in such a red-obsessed city that up until the 1990s, everyone was quaffing French whites but gradually, due to an evolving wine culture among the Chinese there was a growing enthusiasm in red.

“I remember marking the handover with a 1947 Pichon Lalande. In the mid 1990s, when Hong Kong was awash with Cloudy Bay and Pigalle (a bulk crémant), there was a sudden swing to red wine when the locals becoming interested. A bottle of 1967 Mouton Rothschild was $154 which is about  £13 now! Still, it seemed a lot back then.”

David with Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger, at a Champagne dinner

The hedonistic, excessive days of Hong Kong’s fine wine consumption peaked in the mid 1990s with enthusiasts in Hong Kong and China vying for the best vintages and willing to pay exorbitant prices for them, especially first growth Bordeaux which had found its niche among the extravagant and hedonistic locals and expats.

“There was (and still is) huge wealth in Hong Kong and if a particular wine or vintage was prized, there will always be a buyer and one who will pay over the odds for them. When I had to increase some Bordeaux prices by 30 to 40 % thinking that this will slow the demand, the consumers hardly blinked.”

Among the now iconic brands that Webster introduced to the Hong Kong market in the 1990s were Dujac, Comtes Lafon, Dominus, Sassicaia, Gaja and Masi as well as Taittinger, Antinori and Hugel from earlier on in the late 1980s.

“By the end of the 1990s, I had the great privilege to manage the largest and finest portfolio of top quality wines in Hong Kong. This was a portfolio put together over many years and is unlikely to be repeated again in Hong Kong, the way the market has now evolved.”

Webster for himself drinking at home prefers, “a good Bourgogne Blanc of Maconnais” for whites and for reds, “a medium range Burgundy or mellow Tuscan.” Although quite rightly, he admits that “a top Bordeaux from 1945 wouldn’t go amiss.”

When asked out of all the many famous producers and Chateau owners that he has met over the years, whom he would be most inspired by, he answered:

“Robert Mondavi, Miguel Torres, Louis Latour, Piero Antinori and DRC’s Aubert de Villaine for their endless focus on greater quality and upgrading their portfolios.

“In a sense,” he continued, “Everything was a complete gamble in those days. No one knew the market and no one could have predicted that China would be the world’s number one red wine consumer with Hong Kong close behind!

I’ll remember those days very fondly as I have witnessed an extraordinary change in Hong Kong over the last 40-plus years and there’s still nowhere else in the world quite like it.”