It was a land lady in the UK who led Terence into the wine world. Terence was living in digs. The German land lady enjoyed a few glasses of wine while having a meal every Saturday night. She never offered a glass to Terence not because he was under 18 but for she did not think he would be able to enjoy a good glass of wine. It was true at that time Terence could hardly understand wine labels not to mention different varietals and terroir.
What is so special about wine and what information can one find out from a wine label? In order to find the answers to these questions, Terence started reading wine books and drinking different wine. Terence was 19.
While studying in a university in the UK, Terence would buy bins end from a nearby wine shop and started taking his own wine notes each weekend. Wine corks and labels were glued on a board with scores and ratings. Wine tasting became a “highlight” in Terence’s tertiary education.
Background
Terence has many years of working experience in the corporate world. Leading and managing projects, meeting deadlines, taking care of P&L is undoubtedly challenging and satisfying but it is turning to viticulture and wine making which leads to an entirely different interesting world.
Being a wine connoisseur is not enough for Terence. He always mixes work and studies together, by putting in many disciplined hours and that was how he earned a number of postgraduate Masters in business administration, information technology and electronic commerce. The learning paths to get qualified were all interesting and rewarding but it was reading for the Masters in viticulture and wine technology at Melbourne university in Australia satisfied his craving for wine knowledge.
Terence has other interest apart from wine. Horology has always fascinated him. He sees it as a marriage of mechanical science and art. Terence believes in staying healthy through careful eating and moderate drinking. Exercising is another important component in a healthy lifestyle equation. He spent 6 years learning Wu Dang martial arts. His favourite is Tai Chi 108.
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Wine does not lie. It tells you about the weather of the vintage, how the berries were treated, the wine making skills and its journey from the winery to your hand.
/ Terence wong /
Experience
In the early 1980s Terence had a wine column in a local media in Hong Kong. It was in the twelve years between 2010 and 2022, Terence wrote more regularly for a number of publications, including Guangzhou Daily China, Southern Metropolic China, Hong Kong Daily, Hong Kong Economic Journals, Chef Media (UK), Shang magazine (Shangri-la Hotels) etc., He is also the author of a wine book 「醉人投資」 published by Enrich publishing. company.
Terence was an accredited Boreaux Wine School tutor for ten years from 2010 to 2020. Apart from consulting work, he has conducted wine classes at different levels. His clients include Hong Kong Bank private banking, Standard Chartered bank and Swiss Prestige just to name a few.
His consulting work covers anything related to wine. One of projects is to discover Australian boutique wineries and distribute their wine in Hong Kong. In mainland China, he provides consulting work to help companies to customise their wine from label design, cork and enclosure selection, bottling to marketing.
His other consulting work is fine wine investments which primarily involved fine wine acquisition in Europe and trading. A more recent consulting project is the development of a wine preservation system which uses Argon gas. His work focuses on product development and testing.