WINE LOVERS AND FRIENDS

GERRIE LIM interviews VERNES WONG, proprietor of The Central Wine Club

VERNES WONG MAY own an upscale wine club, but he maintains a surprisingly low profile, with a smidgen of understated eccentricity. He still buys his favourite Dolce & Gabbana suits whenever he’s in Florence, yet his crisp white shirts are always made by his regular tailor in Tsim Sha Tsui. The 34-year-old former Merrill Lynch and Credit Lyonnais banker occasionally shows up at his Central Wine Club tastings, but often as not he slinks into the background, as if he enjoys being as nondescript as the building’s facade.

The faceless grey-white exterior of the incongruously named Sea Bird House, on the lower fringes of Lan Kwai Fong where Wyndham meets Wellington, is certainly deceptive. On the third floor, the club is 3,000 square feet of piped-in jazz and modern baroque design, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins wafting out amid the sleek chrome and glass opulence. The rich browns and beiges of the three VIP rooms are redolent of gentlemen’s clubs and cigar bars, though this one happens to be solely devoted to the hedonistic pleasures of the vine.

Choice items exist here for the most discerning of drinkers, such as the 1959 vintages of DRC (Domaine de la Romanée- Conti) La Tâche and Château Mouton Rothschild. Wong’s personal favourite, the 1978 DRC Montrachet Grand Cru, isn’t available but the 2004 vintage is – at an ultra-cool $23,800 a bottle. One might alternatively choose between a 1995 Château Gruaud Larose or a 1997 Château Leoville-Poyferre, both great second growths from Saint-Julien, or from several superb Barolo vintages from Paolo Scavino and Luciano Sandrone. Or the Egon Müller Scharzhofs, sprightly German Rieslings to offset the surfeit of red wine.

“To be honest, I’m not quite sure what used to be here,” Wong says, “but the landlord is a wine lover and a friend. I looked at 20 different places and in the end picked this because it was the most convenient. The club has two entrances – the other one is on Ice House Street, on the street level just next to the FCC, which is great for some of our clients because they have drivers who can drop them off.” Wong dreamed up the idea of his club in late 2009, while he was servicing private clients at the wine-merchant business he still owns, One Red Dot Fine Wines in Tsuen Wan. Many of those wine aficionados told him they had nowhere to go aside from the usual restaurants to enjoy wine outside their homes.

“You can’t do that every weekend, right?” he mused. “That gave me the idea – that if I could have a club in Central with a very convenient location, we could have a place for these wine lovers. We are a half-membership club, actually. We welcome the public but, of course, if you’re a member you’ll enjoy a lot of benefits.” There are three membership levels: Silver, Gold and Platinum, the Platinum’s annual dues of $68,000 granting access to the club’s wine concierge service as well as the wine vault, where individual lockers can store members’ rare or important bottles. Gold membership is restricted to 250 people and Platinum to 60, and 26 people have already signed up for that top tier since the club’s November 2010 opening.

“Yes, I know there are other wine concierge services in Hong Kong, but our advantage is we have 800 bottles in our collection and our Platinum members can just give us a call and pick a wine from our list. They don’t have to bother to go back home or to a retail shop to pick up a bottle, and we can deliver the wine, already decanted if necessary, directly to the hotel or restaurant or wherever they are.” Wong and his three partners (elder brother Daniel Wong and long-time friends Alexander Wong and Ronald Lo) spent $4 million refurbishing the space after leasing it in June 2010. The wine vault alone, an impressive room housing 70 steel lockers under wine-friendly, low-heat LED lighting, cost them $800,000.

Recently, the club held a members-only Château Margaux tasting. “It was a real pleasure,” recalls Thibault Pontallier, the esteemed Bordeaux house’s representative in Asia, who hosted it. “The staff there is very nice, the place is beautiful and the concept is quite new in Asia. It was very exciting for me to see the development of such interesting places dedicated to wine, which show the real commitment, the growing knowledge and genuine interest for wine in Hong Kong.” The club’s inaugural trade tasting last November was devoted to the Hong Kong launch of Roberto Cavalli’s wine line, Cavalli Tenuta Degli Dei, presided over by the fashion designer’s son Tommaso Cavalli, who was visiting from Tuscany.

“We have some interesting old vintages coming in,” Wong discloses of his plans. “We have a 1945 and a 1947 Château Cheval Blanc arriving, most probably in magnum. The wine is still not in Hong Kong yet but we are planning to have them shipped out here soon.” He laughs when asked to reminisce about his own wine history – from his days of drinking supermarket wine as a student during the 1990s at California State University, Northridge to discovering fine wine one night with a bottle of 1991 Château Lafite Rothschild, his Damascus Road moment, after which there was simply no return (though return to Hong Kong he finally did, in 2000). “I used 80 percent of my pocket money purchasing wine when I was in Los Angeles,” he recalls.

He worked for a local wine merchant, Connoisseur Wines, for nine months after leaving the banking profession, and finally struck out on his own by starting One Red Dot Fine Wines in 2002. Not surprisingly, most of what’s on offer at the club comes from that company. “Actually, 99 percent of the wine here is from One Red Dot,” he admits, “but it’s an advantage because it allows us to offer a very reasonable mark-up for the wine. We import directly, so people can get their wines here for a very good price. One Red Dot is a merchant and we can deliver to your home, so it’s completely different. The rent, manpower and operating costs here are a lot more expensive.

“It’s quite difficult to get the balance right, but we already have a very good private client base,” he observes. “Most of our Platinum members are my own private clients and they understand why they’re paying extra. We’re not talking about a huge difference – when you open a $1,000 bottle of wine, you just pay $100 more, so that’s just 10 percent.” Luxury, therefore, implies a value-added intangible? “Yes,” he agrees, with a sly grin, “we are selling convenience.”

www.thecentralwineclub.com