Asia, as most of you are already aware, is THE NEXT BIG THING in wine consumption.  China, of course, is the current big thing in Asia, which means that the Chinese market is THE NEXT BIG THING in wine consumption.  So big, it must be stated IN ALL CAPS!

This is not news – it’s all over the place in print and on-line.  Most of the talk of the Chinese market in the wine community is cloudy, amorphous, and short on understanding of the real scope of the potential dollars involved.  And the real scope is real, real BIG.

Here’s a recent quote from Wines-Info.com on Chinese wine consumption trends, to give you some perspective on what a bold, capitalized and italicized BIG represents:

“The current situation in China is that domestic wine production doesn’t meet its market’s need, which has resulted in surge growth of imported wine. Statistics show that imported bottled wine to China has increased 2368% since 2002 to 2009. With bigger number of Chinese enterprises joining to wine importing business, more foreign vintners and wineries from France, Italy, Spain, Australia, U.S., Chile, Argentina, etc. also step into Chinese market, sharing the hope of wine bonanza in China.”

No, that’s not a typo. That’s an increase of over two thousand percent of wine coming in from other countries to fill the demand created by the emergence of a bona-fide middle class in the Chinese economy. In less than ten years. YOWZA.

My bruthah-from-anothah-muthah Jeff Lefevere over at the award-winning GoodGrape.com, recently highlighted some of the Chinese wine market numbers – and they’re similarly downright shocking:

“It’s anybody’s guess how China will impact the domestic wine business, but we know that the existing auction market and Bordeaux futures are largely being driven by the Chinese. According to reports, US wine exports to Hong Kong totaled $49 million in 2009-2010.  And, it’s been said that the U.S. wants to be the number one exporter of wine to Hong Kong and mainland China.”

That’s a fair chunk of change – and an impressive commitment by the U.S.  And one in which I think they should be deeply cautious, because our businesses are so busy looking at the dollar signs that they aren’t seeing the imprisonments, tortures, and executions that made those dollar signs so big…

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Here’s something that you probably didn’t know:

Asia is now such a powerfully driving force in the marketplace for fine wine, that American collectors have lately been forced to bid bid in Hong Kong for the wines they they really want.  Which means that more and more rare fine wine is on the move (and therefore vulnerable), both from Europe and California to Hong Kong, then back to the U.S. when (or if) those American collectors score the winning bid.

That’s just one of the insights that you might glean from our latest interview, which comes to us from an area of the wine world that, like some kind of mysterious dark matter, is seldom-if-ever-seen but exerts a potentially huge influence on the universe of wine wine world.  This strange influencer? The world of fine wine collection and investment.

Few people know how to navigate this mysterious world as well as today’s interview guest: Katja Zigerlig, who is AVP of Fine Arts, Wine and Jewelry Insurance for the Private Client Group division of Chartis. In her role, she oversees the strategic growth of the “private collections” insurance portfolio for Private Client Group.  Much of her time is spent advising those clients on shipping wine around the world, inventory management and proper cellar management – exposing her to what are likely some of the largest and most expensive private wine collections on Earth.

Ms. Zigerlig has almost two decades of professional experience in the world of collectible art and wine. Prior to joining Private Client Group in 2004, she insured private art and wine collections, museums, galleries and exhibitions for AXA Art Insurance Company. She has a B.A. and M.A. in art history, specializing in twentieth century art (Dude’s personal favorite period), but her experience with fine wine comes via viticulture study at UCLA, and extensively touring Napa and Sonoma wineries. Ms. Zigerlig has gone on to teach courses on wine collecting, and you can find her quoted in recent CNBC and New York Times articles on art and wine collecting.

Ms. Zigerlig is also a good sport, as you’ll soon see in her answers to some of the more colorful questions that I posed to her (you know me… can’t take me anywhere, really…), and she has a thing or two to tell you about protecting your own budding collections.

Anyway, enjoy this rare glimpse into the world of rare wines!…

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We know that I’m not terribly fond of massive tastings.  I did thoroughly enjoy myself at Premiere Napa Valley, however, even if I didn’t get to try all 200 of the wines, mostly because the experience, with lots of people in close proximity to wine and to each other, is uber-social.  For a gadfly like me, it’s like social crack, only with ultra-premium wines and the opportunity to catch up with friends, chill with industry folk, and ask geeky questions of winemakers.

In other words, it’s like super wine crack for me.

I’ve decided not to rate any of the wines I tasted at PNV, because a) you’re unlikely to find them, and b) we are talking some of the best-of-the-best in CA winemaking here, and the scores on my cheesy A-F scale for are in the A- to A+ range for all of these wines; there’s no real point in sharing those subtle shades of differing scores, now is there?  I mean, I’m not getting into a 94 vs 96 points discussion, thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, following are some of my favorites among a field of very, very impeccably made wines (in PNV auction lot order):

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Alternative title: “What I Learned (So Far) At the 2010 Professional Wine Writers Symposium in Napa”

1. Symposium Chairperson and Wines & Vines editor Jim Gordon, may, in fact, be the sweetest and most patient person on the planet (there remains one more day of symposium activities in which to properly test this theory).
2. The amount of downtime built into the entire week of Symposium activities is approximately 47 seconds.
3. The amount of raw talent and brain power among the symposium attendees is staggering, but is immediately doubled in terms of IQ points the moment that AbleGrape.com founder, Yahoo search pioneer, and twitter search guru Doug Cook walks into the room.
4. When you read aloud (over a loudspeaker) a tasting note that you’ve written in which you compare a glass of Syrah to an uncomfortable satin thong, you will piss off famed author, wine educator, and television personality Karen MacNeil [ Editor’s note: this was recently substantiated via personal experience. ]
5. Both Eric Asimov and Steve Heimoff are practical, warm and charming in person (meaning that I have lost at least two bets and the week isn’t even over yet).
6. Harlan wines will be poured judiciously at Symposium after-hours gatherings, but only when I am not available that evening to attend any of them.
7. Journalism jobs, freelance writing gigs, and book deals net you more money than Amazon.com affiliate fees. But not much more.
8. If you take the ethical standards of critical writing / wine review writing, combine them in number, double that number, square the result, and divide by 0.0002, you will arrive at roughly the number of ethical violations that I might have inadvertently committed.  Before lunch. On day one.
9. When Alder Yarrow uses the term “folks at our level” and you realize that he is talking about wine blog writing and is including you, you have to suppress the urge of performing a double-head-fake and then blushing.
10. If you are serious about wine writing, then you should get serious about attending the Symposium in 2011.

Cheers!