Some great taste experiences bring health
benefits only if consumed in moderation.
If a glass of red wine a day is truly good for
your heart, you want to make sure it is the
greatest tasting wine you can afford. For
that, you have to trust the highly trained
palates at Watson’s Wine.
CHATEAUWATSON’S
The pinnacle of taste discretion is achieved
in the global reverence for fine wines.
Watson’s Wine has its own retail outlets,
but also determines the product mix
across PARKnSHOP’s various branded
stores. The huge team must have a wide
and deep knowledge of wines – and
discerning palates across the enterprise.
General Manager Jeremy Stockman is
proud of the widespread expertise in
his team, and working with Watson’s
Wine must be a wine lover’s dream. The
company sponsors staff to take training
courses to become certified by the British
Wine and Spirit Education Trust. Weekly
tasting and scoring meetings are held in
the office, and more tastings occur when
special labels are brought to Watson’s
Wine for the first time.
Mr Stockman clearly believes in training.
“Tasting is all about training. It’s about
palate training and palate memory to
professionally judge wines. And that’s
what I have been encouraging the guys
here to do. You taste quietly on your own
– no bottle, just glasses, and then we talk
about the wines.”
Buyers, sales staff, managers and
others are encouraged and expected
to expand their experience with the
grape. Top tasters travel the world, from
Bordeaux in France to the vineyards of
Australia. When new wines come to
Hong Kong, often the vintners will visit
the offices for a tasting and the whole
team joins in on the experience, tasting
new and exciting products. As the world
wine scene changes, so do local palates
in Hong Kong. The Watson’s Wine team
needs to keep up.
While French wines are the long-time
kings of sales by volume, Australian and
Chilean wines round out the top three
as wine consumption has spread from
the preserve of the ultra-worldly to the
broader population. But the full world of
wine sells well in Hong Kong and now
China. European and New World wines
do well, but new wines always enter the
line-up, ranging from Canadian ice wines,
popular with Asian diners, to the best
wines of India and, lately, Greece. Tasting
of these wines by the Watson’s Wine team
is even more important, as consumers
won’t have access to many reviews of
these lesser-known wines. In Watson’s
Wine they trust.
Our vision guides us as we walk around
and our hearing is wonderful for
communication. But most of the greatest
joys in life that connect us to people,
memories and culture come to us through
10,000 helpers on our tongue. After all,
whether it is a flakier salt, a juicier Mr
Juicy, or a tastier sesame cracker, in the
end, it’s all a matter of taste.
SPHERE
#41
2016
13
<<
