Wine vs Beer: Wine and beer in Hong Kong
Wine is getting all the hype in Hong Kong, but don't count out the humble beer. By Hamish McKenzie
Bigger than New York! More important than London!
While other cities struggled through recession-induced dry horrors, the world’s wine auction houses got excited about Hong Kong as an emerging wine colossus. That’s because the government scrapped taxes on alcoholic drink imports, starting February 2008, opening Hong Kong up as an attractive deal-making hub and an entry point to the fast-growing Mainland market. In October last year, Sotheby’s sold US$8 million of plonk here in a weekend and declared us their most important customers. Robert Parker, the world’s most influential wine critic, has said: “Hong Kong will be the future nexus of the fine wine world.”
We’re loving the taste of it, too. Between 2004 and 2008, wine consumption jumped by 76 per cent, according to a study by the International Wine and Spirits Record and Vinexpo. And by 2013, we’re expected to be quaffing the equivalent of 57.5 million bottles a year.
The colour of money, it seems, is rosé – just like our flag. But what of the humble beer?
Lost in the hype surrounding wine is the fact that we have long been partial to a pint. The beer market in Hong Kong is one of the most competitive in the world, and we’re right next door to China, now the world’s biggest beer market. Hongkongers guzzle more than 1 million hectolitres (one hectolitre is 100 litres) every year. Most of that – 70 per cent, in fact – is covered by five dominant players, the biggest of which are San Miguel, Carlsberg and Heineken, who account for the bulk of the mass-brewed beers in circulation in the city.
So what? This is wine’s time. Hong Kong is drunk on the prospect of beating out New York and London to the claim of the planet’s most important wine market. Wine is fine. It’s romantic. It breathes class, it exudes status. Beer, meanwhile, will get you fat. It’s not sexy. Seldom can you impress a date with a real ale. And besides, it makes you fart.
You’d be a fool, however, to underestimate the power of the brew. Beer in the Middle Ages was a daily necessity, a vital part of one’s diet for men, women and children. Today, it’s still important, a vital part of the social diet for mainly men and teenagers, and though it is now only, say, a weekly necessity, it is not to be discounted. Not even in Hong Kong, where many beer imaginations stretch only as far as a pint of Heineken. For while the beer market here is “at maturity”, as the industry types say, there is now a yeasty undergrowth that’s bringing diversity to our drinking establishments and retailers.
But first, let’s sort out why we’ve had it so bland for so long.
First, there are the economics of it. A specialty beer is far costlier to a bar or retailer than a pint of Carlsberg or San Miguel, and they’re a damn sight harder to source. Those big companies can take advantage of their large distribution networks to deliver beers quickly and fuss-free across the city. The boutique beer companies, meanwhile, have to rely on smaller logistics services, making life that much harder for purveyors of fine brews. Naturally, the mass-market beers offer much higher profit margins. A bottle of Chimay Blue, for instance, costs 1.85 times the price of a pint of Carlsberg.
And if you’re a lover of real ale served on tap? Good luck to you. Real ale is unfiltered and unpasteurised beer that carries yeast that is still active. Its proponents – including the 100,000-member strong Campaign for Real Ale – point out its superior taste and aromas. Unfortunately, once the cask from which it’s dispensed is opened, it also has a rather short life span. That life is even shorter in Hong Kong, where our heat and humidity quickly turn the ales bad within a matter of days.
The Globe – now in new premises on Graham Street in Central – used to import casks of real ale from the UK in winter, striving to keep the beer cool with large blocks of ice, but the venture ultimately
proved too costly. It is prohibitively expensive to import casks of beer and then return the casks to the breweries in the UK. And then there’s the third major problem: space. Most Hong Kong bars just don’t have enough room to store all those casks.
That’s why Briton and Cathay Pacific pilot Pierre Cadoret saw in Hong Kong a gleaming opportunity. “It’s absolutely ripe for a change in beer culture,” says Cadoret, pointing to Hongkongers’ “sophisticated tastes” as evidence. “You only have to look at the wine that’s drunk and the wine that’s on offer.”
Cadoret moved to Hong Kong three years ago armed with a plan: to develop his own microbrewery. He’s now done that, establishing Typhoon Brewery in Mui Wo, which has been in operation since July last year and is now serving up real ales at The Globe and Faraga Chinese Restaurant in Discovery Bay. It’s Hong Kong’s third brewery, alongside the Aberdeen-based Hong Kong Brewery Company, which produces a number of porters, lagers and ales, and the San Miguel factory in Sha Tin, which recently restarted operations.
Cadoret is hoping to kick-start a renaissance for microbreweries here. He points out that Singapore – a similar market to Hong Kong with a strong expat culture in a financial centre – has six microbreweries, and microbreweries are thriving in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, all of which have significant expat representations in Hong Kong. Says Cadoret: “The people are already there, the sophisticated audience is already there – it just hasn’t tried the beers yet.”
Others also see signs of hope. “Interest in more exotic beers has definitely grown in Hong Kong,” says Rhys Adams, marketing director for restaurant and bar group El Grande, which owns a series of beer-focused bars in the city, including Inn Side Out, Hong Kong Brew House, East End Brewery, and Slim’s. “People in Hong Kong are starting to see that there is more to beer than the pale, cold-filtered lager served in a green bottle.”
Adams has seen sales of specialty beers improve over the past two or three years, even while the beer market in general has stagnated. “The overall beer market in Hong Kong is at maturity, but the exotic beer market is growing within it.”
Over at The Globe, owner Toby Cooper sees something of a shift as people are exposed to more good beers from overseas. “People are becoming more adventurous. There’s a bit more education about beer. People are more aware and wanting to try different things.”
Whenever punters ask for a regular lager at The Globe, they’re encouraged by the staff to try something better, educating them about the many wonders of beer in the process.
The complementary forces of education and globalisation – as more people travel and try beers from other countries, they bring those tastes back to Hong Kong – are key to the growth of the specialty beer category in Hong Kong. Globalisation, by now, is well in play, but beer education is also set to earn a boost.
Last year saw the inaugural Restaurant & Bar Hong Kong International Beer Awards, which sought to raise the profile of beer in the wake of the abolition of taxes on alcoholic drink imports. Wine was garnering all the attention, says Stuart Bailey, general manager of Diversified Events, which hosts the annual Restaurant & Bar convention, while beer, a diverse drink in its own right, was being forgotten.
“We saw an opportunity to do something because of the rise in interest in craft beers,” says Bailey of the awards. “We just felt it was lagging behind, especially when you look at what craft beers are doing in other parts of the world.” The idea of the awards, which will be an annual fixture, is to get Hongkongers talking about, and perhaps even sampling, the variety of beers on offer in the city.
There’s also a British beer fest planned for The Pawn in October, which should be a worthy addition to our city’s current scant ale calendar highlights: the annual Lan Kwai Fong Beer Festival and the various drinking parties organised by hotels, bars and other organisations for Oktoberfest.
Meanwhile, Typhoon’s Cadoret is hoping for the arrival of more microbreweries who could join forces and help raise the profile of craft beers collectively. He also reckons Hong Kong might be set for a beer renaissance, such as that which occurred in the UK in the 1980s, when drinkers “rediscovered the tradition of beer”. Known as we are for following international hype, there could well be something to that theory. But for now, we’re all stuck in the wine cellar and it will take all the strength of the world’s best barley, malt and hops to lure us out. Beer lovers, start swilling.
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