Reeze Choi on “dynamic” Hong Kong and becoming Hiroshima’s Pinotage pioneer
We have three new Red Stars in Hong Kong from ambassador Reeze Choi. He’s also been adding Red Stars in Hiroshima, where he’s partially living while he learns about winemaking, in anticipation of starting his own label. Having recently acquired his first plot of land (alongside a host of other projects and forthcoming competitions), we thought it was time for an update from one of Star Wine List’s longest serving team members. Turns out, he’s got big plans for Pinotage…
Sommelier Reeze Choi has reported for Star Wine List since 2019, when Founder Krister Bengtsson saw his impressive performance at the ASI Best Sommelier of the World competition in Belgium, and invited him to become the ambassador for his home, Hong Kong.
“I just said yes to him immediately because I found this a super meaningful thing to do,” Reeze says now. “You know, there's so many different awards for chefs (Michelin, 50 Best, you name it) but there's so few for sommeliers and wine lists – to reward the great wine lists and the people behind that. So I was so, so happy to be in the team.”
Reeze was a semi-finalist in that competition, placing third at the next one in Paris, in 2023. He’s set his sights on the top spot in 2026, in what is likely to be his last appearance at a sommelier competition. “I’d like to have a gold medal in an international,” he says. “Yes. That's what I’m aiming at.” Before the worlds will be this September’s Best Sommelier of Asia and Pacific (also ASI), in Kuala Lumpur.
“I love to be a sommelier, I love to work on the floor,” says Reeze. “I will still keep finding the opportunity to work on the floor as a sommelier but when you fully focus on preparing your competition, you need to sacrifice lots of the other things – you need to spend 100% of your time, you need to spend a lot of money, on that. To talk about 2023 and 2019, I participated in the World’s Best Sommelier competition in these two years. For example, in 2019, I quit my job one year [before] to prepare. So that's a lot of money. And then I need to spend on the wine – I need to buy wines to taste – and I don't have any income at that time. So it's kind of a money-consuming thing to do. I think this will be my last time.”
It’s not like Reeze is at risk of getting bored. Currently, he runs his own wine consultancy in Hong Kong (Somm’s Philosophy), is a brand ambassador for VIVANT WINE (temperature control devices) in Taiwan, and has just been appointed as an ambassador for Saicho Sparkling Tea, which is sending him around Asia: “The new generations, they just don't drink alcohol anymore. And I’m so happy to have the chance to work with a new project like that – non-alcohol – to serve to a different customer.”
Aside from that, he is often popping over to Korea for his Master Sommelier studies (he’s just taken his second attempt at the theory exam, with the American chapter), regularly hosts wine events in Singapore and spends a lot of time at Vinoble Vineyard in Hiroshima, Japan (“I’m slowly switching my career from sommelier to a winemaker”), when not at home with his wife on the island of Ma Wan, in Hong Kong.
“So now if you ask me where I'm from, I say ‘I'm based in Asia.’”
Winemaking in Hiroshima
Reeze is working closely with winemaker Takashi Yokomachi at the family-run Vinoble Vineyard, a 90-minute drive north of Hiroshima, learning all elements of production including pruning, grafting, blending, winemaking, bottling and more. He’s finding the chemistry requirements particularly challenging (“I’m not a good student when I’m in high school and so I already forgot everything!”) along with sales (“the selling part is very challenging to me because I hate to be a salesman”) but is relishing his immersive education.
“It's tough in harvest – we experience 35 degrees Celsius every day and it's super hot – but I enjoy a lot being in the winery, in the vineyard, in the nature. I love it.”
He’s also putting his palate to good use during blending, sparring with the winemaker along the way. It’s all laying the groundwork for Reeze’s own wines, for which he’s just purchased a small plot of land nearby.
And what does he plan to plant?
“I will plant Pinotage there.”
South Africa’s hero grape is not the first thing you might expect Reeze to roll with in Japan. But he has applied logic to this.
I want to make Pinotage the principal grape of Hiroshima
“The winemaker here produces a Pinotage and ... this is quite interesting. I think that the quality is here. You know, in South Africa, there's a lot of shale and clay soil, while our soil, we are purely clay. So I think that Pinotage can work well on the soil.
“And in this winery, the winemakers love Pinot Noir and we have plenty, but I think that, sometimes, it's quite hot here in the summertime, so we need something more hot-climate resistant and also humid resistant. That's why Pinotage exists – because at that time, they try to have Pinot Noir characteristic, but they cross with Cinsault because they need a more humid- or hot-resistant grape variety. That's why they crossed out Pinotage. So I think Pinotage is a good choice here.”
There are a few plantings of Pinotage across the country already, mainly with the 6604 clone from South Africa, but few wines yet. Something Reeze intends to change: “I think of it as my five-year plan. So Hokkaido – principal grape is Pinot Noir. Yamanashi – principal grape is Koshu. Nagano – principal grape is Merlot. But we don't have any principal grape at the moment, so I would like to do something big: I would like to show the world that Pinotage works well in Hiroshima. And in the future, if someone is interested to produce Pinotage, maybe I could share my knowledge to them. So I want to make Pinotage the principal grape of Hiroshima in the future.”
Next step, he divulges, is to get himself to South Africa to explore all the clones and formulate a plan. He intends to play to the contemporary tastes for “light, refreshing and fruity” wines by creating Pinotage of more red-fruited notes rather than black – something “that smells like a Pinot Noir but that still has the body, tannins, structure, not so much oak,” possibly combining the use of old and new barrels for balance.
The wine scene in Hong Kong and beyond
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Reeze now lives on Ma Wan. “Hong Kong is a beautiful city but, nowadays, because I love nature so much, I decided to move to a small island because it’s so crowded when you go to Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong is a very dynamic city, we've got great food, a lot of nice food, and it's close to the sea. I love fishing, so it's very easy for me to go fishing from time to time.”
When selecting Red Stars, the ambassador says that “yes, the wine list is very important, but I think the program behind people is very important too. It’s super easy to build a good wine list if you have money – you can put a lot of wine in your wine list and become a great wine list – but the people behind it are very important … Yes, it's about the wine list but also about the experience.”
Specifically, Reeze is a stickler for wine temperatures, personally gauging every single glass or bottle he serves during tastings, to the point of becoming known as “Mr Temperature.”
Across wine lists, he is noticing greater attention being paid to the design and layout. “I think that's what people are now thinking: how to make something very eye-catching, because a good wine list is also a good weapon for you to upsell the wine.
“Another trend is that they don't even have a wine list. In some of the wine bars, I go, ‘Do you have a wine list?’ And they go, ‘No, we don’t. You can go inside our wine cellar and pick what you like.’ Or they put everything on a rack and write the price on the bottles because this is the most direct way to let the customer see the design of the label. So I think not having a wine list is also a trend.”
Discover our updated guide to Hong Kong and all of Reeze’s new venues, below.
Reeze’s new Red Stars in Hong Kong
Reeze’s new Red Stars in Hiroshima
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