Details, despair and death: On listing wine dinners in China

Every few years I start a sure-to-be-disastrous project known as List of Wine Dinners in China. It consists of combing through my inbox, gathering info about wine dinners and rearranging everything in a master email or blog page. It ultimately results in people getting upset because I wrongly typed a price or date or missed this or that event. And in me getting an increasing sense of despair from repeatedly inputting the words “plus 15 percent service charge“.

So, an announcement: I am listing wine dinners again. Why do it? Because as Umberto Eco once said, “We like lists because we don’t want to die“. And because people need to know when they can enjoy a six-course dinner, complete with fois gras from Hebei province and petit fours, with Ernst Loosen when he visits China. That’s why.

I’ll add them to this page on the blog and include some highlights in the new Grape Wall newsletter — get more details here or sign up here.

The initial plan is to list wine dinners in Beijing. If I can handle that, I will expand it to some other cities. I might get wild and crazy and add some wine lunches — and even a wine breakfast or two. Then again, I might keep those breakfasts quiet to prevent the neighbors from talking. We’ll see. I have also rented an extra wall to bang my head against when things inevitably go awry.

Finally, a caveat: mistakes happen when transferring info so it is always best to double-check with the distributor or venue in terms of prices, dates, seating availability next to Ernst Loosen, and so on. Also, for venues that have a service charge, I added it to the base price in order to provide the true cost.

Here are the first three dinners:

• Domaine de Pailus (Loire) and Hernando y Sourdais (Ribera del Duero0) with wine maker Bertrand Sourdais, by Globus Wines
  
• Helan Qing Xue (Ningxia) with winery consultant Li Demei, by The Wine Republic
• Louis Jadot (Burgundy) with export manager Sigfried Pic, by ASC Fine Wines

More details on this page.

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