The Fine Wine Experience offers online tastings and in-store karaoke pairings
Hong Kong wine lovers can get next-day delivery of the tasting menu to try during digital question-and-answer sessions with specialists
Behind a line-up of bottles flanked by glasses, Hong Kong-based sommeliers Alexandria Rae Cubbage and Florian Rossignol taste wines, answer questions and toast the only people in the room: each other.
At the Fine Wine Experience, in Sai Ying Pun, social distancing has not dented the public’s appetite for good wine. The shop is offering online tasting events through Facebook, staying true to its mission – what co-founder and managing director Linden Wilkie calls the “experience of wine”.
“I think it’s a very 2020 thing to be able to do,” says Wilkie, a New Zealand native who has lived in Hong Kong for a decade.
Housed in a former car showroom on the harbourfront, the Fine Wine Experience’s high ceiling caps off an airy space that’s bedecked with shelves filled with wines, most from France’s Burgundy region. Memorabilia from past events adds to the decor – one shelf houses empty bottles, all from the 19th century, which were opened and shared at a dinner last year.
Apart from a central space that can host up to 80 people, the Fine Wine Experience offers food at a bar and two plush karaoke rooms: many guests find their wines pair well with Canto-pop classics, Wilkie says.
From an office space of 70 sq ft in 2013 – where Wilkie and co-founder Michael Wu “worked at two ends of a desk”, as Wilkie describes it – the shop moved into its current 7,000 sq ft space in January last year.
