Jefford on Monday

A little over six months ago, I was standing more or less on the other side of the world. The weather, as I made my way up Stone Chimney Creek Road, was much as it is in this corner of the northern hemisphere today: a sky the colour of mushroom stalks, misty rain blowing on the wind, temperatures cold enough to make wearing a parcel of goose down advisable. If our world didn’t tilt, of course, these seasonal pulses wouldn’t happen. But it does – so the brightness and warmth I left behind back in May is now, in November, lavished on the south.

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I was discussing grape seeds and insomnia over breakfast with Randall Grahm when the sirens went off. We walked over to the window and looked out. There, six floors below, was a world at standstill; only the Turkish flags rode gently on the breeze. Passers-by had halted, suddenly meditative on the pavement; buses paused randomly between stops. I looked across the dining room: an elderly Turkish lady stood over her half-eaten breakfast, dabbing the corner of her eye.

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Was Serge Renaud the man who sold 1.38 billion bottles of wine in the USA? No, but he helped.

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Impressive, beautiful and disconcerting: that’s Hong Kong. I made my first visit for the Decanter Asia Wine Awards a few weeks ago. Seven million people squeeze on to just 25 per cent of the region’s 1,092 square kilometers of intractable granite and rhyolitic lava, which demands impressive civil engineering. The other 800 sq km soars upwards vertiginously, and is a jungle kingdom administered by a panoply of luscious insects and intriguing snakes: a beautiful contrast.

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