Farr Vintners was the first UK merchant to establish a sales office in Hong Hong – over 20 years ago – which has been run ever since by Jo Purcell along with an excellent team of tri-lingual English/Cantonese/Mandarin speakers. When Jo arrived in what was, at the time, a British colony, the import tax on wine was 90% and sales were small. However, we always had customers here who were fanatical wine lovers and a massive breakthrough came when duty was completely scrapped in 2008. This resulted, not surprisingly, in an extraordinary boom in demand for wine which has continued to this day. Hong Kong is now very much the wine hub of Asia and arguably the world’s capital city of fine wine. Wine lovers enjoy wine at lower prices here than anywhere else in the world as there is no sales tax (VAT/GST) as well as zero duty. There is a vibrant restaurant culture with wonderful food and a great passion for the world’s finest wines.
As Crystal Palace Football Team flew into HK for the Asia Premier League games, so did Stephen our Chairman – such a coincidence! In between football fever we arranged a staff dinner on Friday night at a Shanghainese Restaurant – Lao Xue Yuan (Old Snow Garden). A recently opened cozy restaurant which is located near to our Hong Kong office in Causeway Bay.
Olivier Bernard and I are the same age. I joined Farr Vintners in 1984 as a 24 year old and he arrived at Domaine de Chevalier in 1983 aged just 23 years when his family bought the property from Claude Ricard. I have always liked Olivier as he’s one of the few Bordeaux proprietors who genuinely loves wine and has a huge knowledge of all of the world’s great wines, not just Bordeaux.
