Messages in a bottle

There are few things more enjoyable than relaxing after a day in the office over a decent glass of wine. But how do you ensure that the wine you pick is going to be decent? For many, this is a surprisingly daunting experience, especially when the wine list is five pages long or a sommelier insists of introducing the wines using technical terms you’ve never heard before.
You’ll probably feel more at ease with the Wines of the World list. It provides drinker-friendly, easy-to-digest information about different wines that have been selected for food and beverage outlets in Starwood Hotels and Resorts properties all around the world.
“I have to say that we’re not rating wines nor are we wine experts,” Martin B Jones, vice president for Food and Beverage Asia Pacific in Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, tells us at the launch event held Wednesday at the St Regis Bangkok.
“We want to wider offer options on wines, and cater to wine-drinking guests that come to stay or enjoy the facilities at our hotels,” explains the affable Jones, who has headed the selection panel since 1999.
With more than 30 years experience in the hospitality industry, Jones is the recipient of the Starwood Business Excellence Award for Most Creative Innovator.
The programme started in 1999 with eight partnering wineries. This year sees the biggest selection to date with 30 different partners and 250 wines from 11 countries.
“In the ’80s and ’90s, you’d usually be asked what kind of whisky or gin you wanted but when it came to wine, the question was ‘red or white’. And a lot of the time, the wine served was from boxes, so wine drinkers didn’t really have any better choices.
“We decided to encourage our hotels to have more options and launched this programme. The list is extensive but we also allow each hotel and each food and beverage outlet to adjust the list to their guests’ liking. So it’s not the same wines everywhere you go. And we update it every two years to add new items and keep it relevant to the current trends.”
While wines from Australia remain the most popular in the programme, Wines of the World 2014 has fewer bottles from Australia and more from France, Germany, Spain and even China and India. The menu has expanded to include wines by Torres, one of the most recognisable names in Spanish wines, as well as Luis Felipe Edwards winery in Chile, a family run operation and winner of Chile’s Produce of the Year in the AWC Vienna International Wine Challenge.
The sleek little booklet contains all you need to know about each winery. The wines are categorised either by country, region or characteristics, depending on the outlets. You’ll find this list in 22 hotels under Starwood Hotels and Resorts in Thailand, representing eight out of nine brands namely Le Meridien, aloft, Four Points, Westin, The Luxury Collection, W Hotels, Sheraton and St Regis. A massive 3.2 million glasses of wines were sold under this programme last year.
“One of the benefits is the opportunity to experience different wines, try wines that you’ve never tasted before and educate yourself. Because the bigger the variety of wines you’ve tasted, the more your personal preference develops and the more comfortable you’ll be when you drink. This is essentially a wine-by-the-glass programme that allows you to enjoy various types of wines on one occasion. We don’t ask you to open a bottle that you’ll be stuck with throughout dinner. You can have three or four different wines with your three-course dinner. We don’t mark up a big percentage. We try to keep things balanced and when the wines are expensive, we add less of a profit margin for them to be more affordable.” Jones says.
“When we started, it was very Chardonnay-focused and there were only single-grape wines.” Jones recalls.
“Now with the rise in the ABC – anything but chardonnay crowd – we’ve moved away from Chardonnay. We have more blends, because winemakers are getting creative. And some grapes mix very well. The same goes with red. The big and bold Shiraz can now be softened with Merlot. Riesling from Germany, which a lot of people avoid because they think it will be too sweet, is offset by the same varietals from Australia and New Zealand. There are a lot of great options out there for you to try.”