Biografia: Wine writer, educator and consultant based in Beijing, I co-founded Dragon Phoenix Fine Wine Consulting (www.longfengwines.com) with Fongyee Walker, China's only MW candidate, in 2007. Dragon Phoenix is Beijing's first fully independent wine consultancy and mainland China's most successful WSET provider (www.wsetglobal.com) .
Fongyee and I met at university where we cut our teeth at blind-tasting as Captains of the Cambridge University Wine Tasting team (www.cubwts.co.uk). We have since judged at the International Wine Challenge, the China Wine Challenge and other competitions around the world. Articles have appeared in Decanter, The World of Fine Wine - both individually and in a regular column we co-author called 'Sinophile' - Drinks Business and in several publications within mainland China. On-line wine writing has been featured on Catavino, Enobytes, Visit Vineyards and What Wine.
I am currently working toward completion of the CWE and WSET Diploma as well as establishing the first wine programme at Tsinghua University where I work as an Associate Professor in Foreign Languages (Literature in English).
A word on tasting: I score wines out of 20 on a relative system. In other words, if a basic Burgundy (e.g. Bourgogne Blanc or Bourgogne Rouge) receives 18/20 it is likely to be a very good wine in its category but not usually as good as a comparably well-made Premier Cru or Grand Cru Burgundy which has scored 18/20 (assuming quality of production - I'm aware producer is everything). Clearly, price or even a wine's nominal 'category' are rarely faultless indicators of quality, especially with Burgundy. But the higher the price and more prestigious the origin the harder the wine has to work, in my view, to achieve a high score. Not every wine, therefore, that receives the same numerical score is of the same quality. Each should be valued relative to the kind of wine produced and the price point asked (see Wine Searcher, Vinopedia etc.).
Happy tasting!
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