HONG KONG WINE FORUM the Island Shangri La PRESENTED by the WINE FORUM and SENSIS INNOVATION Hong Kong

IN VINO CARITAS 9 October 2015 THE HONG KONG WINE FORUM The Island Shangri La PRESENTED BY THE WINE FORUM AND SENSIS INNOVATION Hong Kong In support of the Children’s Medical Foundation Contents Welcome to the Wine Forum 2 Schedule 5 Menu 6 The Children’s Medical Foundation 8 History of Burgundy 10 Contributors and biographies 28 1 Welcome to The Wine Forum It is with great pleasure that we present to you The Wine Forum’s 2015 Burgundy Tasting in Tonight, we highlight wine from the Burgundy region of France. Many wine lovers believe Hong Kong. that Burgundy is home to the highest forms of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grape varieties. With more than 1,500 years of cultivation, it is hard to argue against this belief. However, to The Wine Forum is a low profile wine society whose 250 members share three attributes: The Wine Forum, Burgundy is more than just pure, scholarly wine. To us Burgundy represents all that we, as a group, stand for – that is that fine wine is not a right, but a privilege. they are global leaders in their fields; they deeply appreciate fine wines; and they avidly pursue The region’s very top winemakers resolutely believe they are merely custodians of cherished philanthropic interests. In 2014, the Financial Times “How to Spend It Magazine” named us one plots. And that their role is to make the best wines possible in their time and pass on of the three most exclusive wine clubs in the world. However, we are merely an informal society the vineyard to the next generation. Working the soil and toiling with vine is indeed to them, whose members voluntarily match their wine purchases with a charitable donations. a privilege. And with this privilege come responsibilities towards those less fortunate. Burgundy has captured this spirit for hundreds of years, most notably in the form of This evening with the generous support of Sensis Innovation, the wine storage technology the Hospices de Beaune Charity Auction. company, we are supporting The Children’s Medical Foundation charity (CMF). CMF operates in rural China where many new-born babies die each year due to inadequate However, many other charitable events occur there including the “Climats du Coeur”, neo-natal care. CMF helps bridge this gap, by training medical staff and providing necessary instigated by a group of top winemakers after the abundant 2009 vintage and the Musique et Vin equipment. (“Music and Wine”) festival. The Wine Forum members have supported all these charities in the past including most recently providing a new Cello crafted by France’s premier luthier and donated at the 2015 Music and Wine festival. We look forward to this evening anticipating great wines brought by participants and matched with excellent fare provided by the Island Shangri La Hotel. We appreciate the generosity of our sponsors, Sensis and also to your generosity as participants supporting CMF. With our best regards, — 9 October 2015 David Spreng Vidhi Tambiah Co-founder Co-founder The Wine Forum The Wine Forum 2 3 Schedule Fri 9 Oct 2015 6:30 PM Reception 7:55 PM Welcoming speeches 8:00 PM Dinner commences 9:20 PM Auction 10:00 PM A performance by Ms. Linda Wong 10:10 PM Silent auction 10:35 PM Final speeches 11:00 PM Carriages • Violoncelle de Franck Ravatin, (2014) — A copy of Bernard Greenhouse’s Stradivarius sponsored by The Wine Forum members at the Musique et Vins charity 2015 festival in Burgundy. 4 5 Menu DELICIOUS AUTUMN WALK ALONG THE SÂONE Jambon persillé à la bourguignonne Bain-Marie cooked pork chunks layered with choped parsley. Trio d’escargots Three snail amuse-bouches, composed with the chef’s secret ingredients. Bœuf Bourguignon Beef braised in red wine and beef broth served with carrots, mushrooms and applewood smoked roasted potatoes. Or Pôchouse du Val de Saône Perch fillet poached in a creamy white wine sauce. served with vegetables and steam baby potatoes. Sélection du fromager Cheese with mixed salad and walnuts. (Aged Comté/Morbier/Epoisses). Tarte Tatin upside-down baked pastry with brandied caramel sauce. • Chateau du Clot de Vougeot — Wall-enclosed vineyard, in the Burgundy wine region, France. 6 7 ABOUT THE CHARITY THE CHILDREN’S MEDICAL FOUNDATION (CMF) The Children’s Medical Foundation (CMF) is the leading charity helping solve a little-known but serious healthcare service gap in rural China. Babies born in these remote areas are four times more likely to die in their first month of life than those born in urban areas as a result of insufficient medical skills and equipment. To address this critical need, CMF establishes vital neonatal care units. In partnership with leading urban hospitals we train medical professionals and provide the necessary equipment to establish centers of excellence in neonatal care. This training and equipment can help prevent the unnecessary death of hundreds of newborn babies every year. Over the past few years, CMF has launched 26 new programs across Guizhou, Sichuan, and Yunnan. Focusing on neonatal care, CMF addresses one of the most critical yet least understood challenges facing China and the developing world today. For any newborn, food, air, warmth and love are the most basic of needs that require constant care. It requires dedicated and highly trained doctors and nurses who can withstand the rigors of nursing a 1,500-gram prem ture baby, born with respiratory distress and feeding difficulties, to a state of health that finally allows a safe journey home and a long and healthy life. It is our vision to ensure this level of expertise is made available at a hospital hundreds of kilometers from large urban centers and enable even the poorest families to receive the care their new baby needs. Children’s Medical Foundation relies on the generous support of its donors and has an active and committed board. It is the vison of CMF that all newborn babies receive the neonatal care they require regardless of their location or the financial circumstances of their families. Your support can save the lives of China’s poorest and most vulnerable children. For informations about the charity, please visit: www.cmf.org.hk 8 9 The Burgundy Wine Region The history 10 11 History of Burgundy The duchy of Burgundy was once so proud Although transport difficulties still hindered of having the finest wines and finest court in burgundy’s fame abroad, the famous giant Christendom that it developed into a state, Pierre Brosse managed to interest Louis XIV in and very nearly a kingdom in its own right. his Mâcon and the Sun King’s physician, Fagon, The defeat and death of the over-ambitious prescribed old burgundy instead of champagne Charles the Rash, however, led to its being as the most suitable wine for his monarch’s reincorporated into the kingdom of France. health. As the monarchy became stronger, the power of the Church declined slowly, so that during Roads began to improve in the 18th century the 17th century many of the famous vineyards and the tolls and tribulations inherent in donated to the Church during the Middle road travel diminished, encouraging the start Ages were sold to the increasingly important of commercial traffic in Burgundy. The first bourgeoisie in Dijon. négociant (merchant) houses were founded in the 1720s and 1730s, including Champy (1720) and Bouchard Père et Fils (1731), names which have survived to this day. The earliest major work on the wines of Burgundy, Claude Arnoux’s Dissertation on the Situation of Burgundy… Was published in 1728. It demonstrates the fame of the red wines of the Côte de Nuits and the special reputation of the OEil-de-Perdrix (partridge-eye) pink wines of Volnay, while the existence of white wine in the Côte de Beaune earns only a brief mention. Most vineyards remained in the hands of Church or nobility until the French Revolution. From 1791, the vineyards were sold off, often split between several owners. Since then they have further fragmented as a result of the law of equal inheritance among children laid down in the Napoleonic Code. Rigaud Hyacinthe, Louis XIV — King of France excerpts from the Oxford Companion to Wine, www.jancisrobinson.com • La fête champêtre à la cour de Bourgogne — Garden party with kind permission from Jancis Robinson MW. at the Court of Philip the Good of Burgundy 12 13 This process has caused much of the difficulty Transport conditions continued to improve in understanding burgundy: The consumer with the opening of a canal system in Burgundy, must familiarize himself not only with a and the Paris–Dijon railway in 1851. Easy plethora of village and vineyard names but also prosperity was first checked, however, by the with the relative merits of possibly dozens of spread of powdery mildew in the 1850s and producers of each one. then destroyed by the arrival of the phylloxera louse in the 1870s. This calamity was finally admitted in the Côte d’Or in 1878 when an infested vineyard in Meursault was surrounded by soldiers. The Burgundians did not find it easy to come to terms with the problem: there were riots in Bouze-lès-Beaune between factions in favour of treating vineyards and those against; a posse of growers in Chenôve actually attacked a team sent in to spray the vines; American rootstocks, the eventual saviours of French vineyards, were banned from the region between 1874 and 1887. Eventually, however, common sense prevailed and by the 1890s postphylloxera wines were again on the market. Only the best vineyards Complexity of some wine estates in Burgundy were worth replanting after the predations of phylloxera, a valuable side benefit of the Burgundy prospered in the early 19th century, disaster.

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