I hunt down value wines with soul, the kind that tell stories, spark debates, and challenge your assumptions about what good and "affordable" can taste like. The deal: Hong Kong prices with free delivery in urban areas. Six-bottle minimum. Ready to explore? WhatsApp 852 66236746 or email cf.lau@dunndunn.hk - Kevin K Tang
(with English sub-titles)
Violets. Violets. Violets. Then strawberries and raspberries — and you are already somewhere else.
There are always pastille tones and shades to the red fruit on aeration — that quality of ripe fruit condensed and brightened, like the best children’s soft sweets: a Rowntree’s Pastille, or any of its variants. Almost all vintages then give a brighter, more intense ruby colour; they have lots of interesting dry extract (rose, violets, lavender), with quality freshness (strawberries) and fruit precision (blackcurrant, cranberry, lemon — each flavour vivid and distinct).
Well-structured and reasonably complex, all bottles start with smoky cassis and new oak (mocha coffee and vanilla), good fruit purity (ripe red and dark fruit), a bright core, and well-worked tannins. On the palate, the fruit profile turns complex- always fruity and round with strawberries, raspberries, and blackcurrants.
With suitable fruit length in quality Cru, all vintages are easy without losing intensity; tense without losing balance. And all bottles are excellent for all occasions. However, if you are hunting for a brooding, labyrinthine Margaux, Malescot St. Exupéry may not be the wine for you. But if you want pleasure, precision, and that electric red-fruit signature — it is very much yours.
The stylistics will say: clean, balanced, and unapologetically fruity. A modern wine that knows exactly what it is.
The Malescote St Exupery style is reflected in the technicals summarised as follows. Vinification/Maturation/Temperature-controlled and matured in predominantly new oak (typically around 80%, though this varies by vintage); hence, the wine is bold and powerful. All vintages undergo malolactic fermentation in barrel, depending on the vintage, and are aged on lees with stirring; hence, there is always adequate intensity, complexity, and textural touch. Mostly 13–14 months of barrel ageing before being racked without fining or filtration — hence that characteristic creaminess on the mid-palate. ABV is just right; almost all vintages are at 13.5%, so this wine is full-bodied. All vintages are 56% Cabernet Sauvignon, 29% Merlot, 7% Cabernet Franc, and 8% Petit Verdot; the varied grapes create greater complexity over time. The mineral finish is more from the soil, gravel overlying chalk or marl, slopes towards the Gironde. Fruit is picked into trays to prevent crushing, thereby preserving freshness.
2007 has lifted acidity on the palate, leading to an extended finish. It now wears the traits of a classic claret — complexity, maturity, tertiary depth, and fruit that refuses to quit.
2011 is lean and slightly austere, but there is real elegance in that restraint; a wine that rewards patience.
2013 is a vintage of quiet refinement — mid-weight, with gentle tannins, red cherry and violet aromatics, and a finish of surprising harmony. It is precisely this exotic, un-Left-Bank-like red fruit — so unlike the expected macho Margaux — that is the greatest paradoxical attraction of Malescot. Think Rowntree's Pastilles: ripe fruit condensed into vivid, jewel-bright flavours — blackcurrant, strawberry, cranberry, lemon — each distinct, each singing. Pair it with Japanese strawberry chocolate, and you are in a different kind of heaven.
2014 is floral, solid, seamless, and long; its fruit profile drums to a different beat — blueberry and cool minerality leading the way. 2015 is easy to love and impossible to resist. Farr wrote aptly, 'inky colour with a dense black fruit nose. The palate is rich with mouth-filling tannins and a glycerol texture, which gives the blackcurrant and cherry fruit an oozing ripeness. The finish is pure cassis with a bit of creamy vanilla. Plush with no hard edges. Edited.'
2017 is tightly wound, mineral-driven, with good fruit held in check by a dry, focused finish — a wine still finding its voice.
Across all these vintages, one truth holds: Malescot St. Exupéry does not seduce you with power or intimidate you with structure. It seduces you with pleasure — that bright, condensed, pastille-pure red fruit that arrives like a surprise and stays like a memory. From the lean austerity of 2011 to the plush generosity of 2015, from the quiet refinement of 2013 to the mineral tension of 2017, each bottle is unmistakably itself, and unmistakably Malescot. This is a Margaux that does not ask to be decoded. It asks only to be enjoyed.
PHOTO: FROM WINE BERSERKERSM UK
I hunt down value wines with soul, the kind that tell stories, spark debates, and challenge your assumptions about what good and "affordable" can taste like. The deal: Hong Kong prices with free delivery in urban areas. Six-bottle minimum. Ready to explore? WhatsApp 852 66236746 or email cf.lau@dunndunn.hk - Kevin K Tang
Every time I sit with a bottle of Sociando-Mallet, something quiets in me. It's not awe, but recognition like noticing a cornerstone in a Roman church. You don’t admire its elegance, but respect it because it supports everything above it.
This wine does not flatter. No shimmer, no fairy-tale prettiness, no perfumed first impression. For some, that's its virtue. For others, it's a flaw.
For the die-hard, the structure-obsessed, the one who knows Pauillac prices and looks north, Sociando-Mallet is a private triumph. Called the poor man’s Pauillac, it's enough for those who know. The comparison makes sense: Sociando-Mallet shares that firm backbone and classic cassis-and-graphite profile, its tannins built for ageing. While Pauillac is famous for majestic power and the gloss of first-growth polish, Sociando-Mallet is sturdier, a bit more reserved, sometimes earthier, always honest. Both reflect gravelly soils and the chill of the Gironde, but Sociando-Mallet keeps its feet on the ground, less about opulence, more about resilience.
For the younger palate, the less initiated, the drinker raised on wines that open and charm at once, Sociando-Mallet can feel like an old fart. A wine fixed in its certainties, immovable, self-certain, indifferent to fashion. Maybe not entirely wrong to be.
This estate shaped how I think about quality. Not by spectacle but by consistency. Good years are exceptional. Difficult vintages reveal true character. Even in lesser years, the wine holds.
Situated in the Haut-Médoc, just north of Saint-Estèphe, Sociando-Mallet was not around when the 1855 classification was created and later intentionally stayed outside the Cru Bourgeois system. On paper, it’s in an official category of its own, neither classed growth nor bourgeois. I see a certain dignity in that. To me, Sociando-Mallet is too good to need a classification or simply too honest to fit into one. The usefulness of classification systems is a debate I keep revisiting, always with this estate at the centre of my thoughts.
The vines are about 35 years old, old enough to speak with authority. The blend is 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, and a touch of Cabernet Franc. You feel it: complexity that doesn’t announce itself, intensity that builds slowly. Gravel over clay-limestone, sloping toward the river, ripens earlier than estates further south. Aged in 100% new oak, which could overwhelm, but here it doesn’t.
The wine’s ability to take new oak without losing character says a lot. Tasting six vintages, each over twenty years old, I notice each is unique. The blend stays the same, but the character changes. The tannins are silky and balanced by fruit. Everything is in harmony, but each wine is distinct. Sociando-Mallet can age effortlessly for 15 to 25 years, sometimes longer in the best vintages. It typically shows best after a decade when the structure softens, and layers of earth and graphite rise to the surface, but the wine never loses its honesty. That’s why I keep coming back. 2002. A difficult year, and the wine knows it—but doesn't surrender. Deep ruby, medium garnet rim. The nose opens classic: fruit, then tar, then graphite with air. Masculine, earthy, grainy, barely drying. It doesn't pretend. It simply does good work.
2003. The heat of that summer lives in this wine—dense, concentrated, almost defiant. Deep ruby, medium garnet rim. Blackberries, blackcurrants, then a cool whisper of eucalyptus. Sweet tannins, lively acidity, the fruit shows no sign of letting go. Fresh and balanced on the palate, with a long finish of cedar, leather and spice. This could have been a caricature of the vintage. Instead, it has grace.
2007. Medium ruby, tight garnet rim—this one takes its time. The bouquet opens with roasted notes and little fruit. It needs to breathe before ripe black fruit emerges. On the palate, there’s something creamy; balance feels earned, not easy. But like the nose, the wine holds back. I don’t think it’s finished. Give it time.
2012. This arrives differently—deep purple, tight pink rim, and more energy. Sweetish dark fruit, ripe tannins, fresh acidity, and a cassis finish that stuns. It belongs among the best of the Médoc, classified or not. There is a softness that makes it easy now, but I’d wait five years—it will deepen.
2014. Deep ruby, tight rim. A wine that doesn’t concede. Blackcurrant, smoke, an austere, tense build—full-bodied, long, faithful. Since en primeur, balance has pulled inward. Mineral finish, undeniable structure, and it will ask more of you. Not everyone will love that. I do.
2017. The most immediately satisfying. Opens on red fruit, then turns dark and toasty, finding its register in real time. Powerful structure, robust tannins, assured length. It knows what it is. A Haut-Médoc classic at Cru level, ready now.
Six vintages, six years, one unbroken argument. Sociando-Mallet will never be the wine that turns heads. It's the wine you return to when the room no longer matters.
Updated: Apr 1
Please let me know if I infringe any copyright, and I will remove it immediately. K Tang.
Two songs. Two bans. One very telling difference.
Thailand never claimed greatness. It planted its rice, smiled at its tourists, and got on with things. Quietly. China’s civilisation, on the other hand, goes back 5,000 years — and it will tell you so. The government that has shaped what that civilisation is permitted to feel has been in place since 1949. Considerably shorter history. Considerably louder about it.
Yet Thailand — the one without the five-thousand-year press release — heard a song mocking its temples and rivers, shrugged, and let the whole world sing along. I was there. Singing it with colleagues at a conference near the city, cheerfully, not a second thought between us. Meanwhile, a song that loved Chinese civilisation deeply and honestly was banned. Make of that what you will.
Bangkok was banned for mocking Thailand. The insult was right on the surface. Understandable, if ironic.
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Beijing — 北京一夜, Běijīng Yī Yè — is a different matter entirely. Written by Bobby Chen (陳昇), immortalised by the rock band Xin Yue Tuan (信樂團). It mourns 1989. Not loudly. Not with a fist raised. But undeniably, in Beijing, I left behind many feelings. Whether you love it or not, it's all just dust in the wind. I dare not ask for directions at midnight, lest I wander into the depths of a hundred flowers. The serene old woman still waits for the returning warrior.* The warrior never came home. The hundred flowers were Mao's trap, disguised as an invitation. Don't drink too much—gentle on the surface, but underneath, it quietly warns: be careful what grief brings out in this city, at this hour. That refrain is not heartbreak. It is the voice of those erased, quiet and persistent, impossible to ignore. I know this because I have spent decades tasting wine professionally, diploma in hand, across continents. That training teaches one thing above all: the finest things never announce themselves. They reveal their depth only to those who pay close attention. This song is the same. Like a great Burgundy, it shares its secrets slowly. You just have to notice.
Full disclosure: this whole piece is my puzzle. I am a western-trained classical guitarist. Pop production is not my world. Not even close. So take this for what it is — an honest ear from outside the room, applied to both songs equally.
Bangkok stands out for its craft. Andersson, Ulvaeus, and Tim Rice combined orchestra, electronics, rap, and chorus in a way that was ahead of its time. Even the wit works: one night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster (everything is there for the taking, though the narrator would rather play chess). It's hard to argue with that.
But Beijing does something Bangkok never attempts. The falsetto chorus — drawn from Beijing opera — shifts the tonal centre the way a classical piece shifts key. Suddenly. Completely. Centuries of cultural memory speaking through a rock band, without explanation, without apology. Every Chinese listener knows immediately what has entered the room. A western listener feels it without knowing why. A song about a city. Beijing feels like a song where the city itself is singing.
I am Chinese, from Hong Kong. In 1987, I was in the city — the same summer I sang One Night in Bangkok at a conference near the city, not a care in the world. Two years later, Tiananmen happened. I left. Bobby Chen went to Beijing in 1992, still raw from what the world had witnessed, and wrote this song. I came back to Hong Kong for good in 1994. Between those dates lives everything this song is trying to say — and everything the ban is trying to bury because you have stopped loving it. You leave when something is done in its name that love cannot cover. And if you return, it is not because the wound has healed, but because your connection is deeper than the pain. That is the only honest way I can see it. Chinese civilisation, like all great things, is full of beauty at its best, but also capable of darkness that many would rather ignore. I see both. I accept the whole truth. Because I do, I have nothing to hide and nothing to prove.
Thailand’s modesty cost it nothing. It absorbed the joke, kept its dignity, and moved on — the way only a culture genuinely at ease with itself can. A civilisation that gave the world the Tang poets and Beijing opera deserved better stewardship than that. The louder the claim of greatness, it seems, the less room there is for grief.
A culture truly confident in itself would have accepted Beijing as its own, and understood that elegy is not rebellion. Mourning the dead is not the same as attacking the state. The old woman at the gate is not accusing anyone. She represents loyalty that is older and deeper than any single moment in history.
Instead, the ban confirmed what the song already knew. The dust in the wind was not a lover’s feeling. It was the truth — swept away, refused a grave (denied even the dignity of being remembered).
What a joke, one might say. As always, the joke is on those who couldn’t take it.
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One Night in Bangkok is the better pop song. One Night in Beijing is the more important one. Beijing should have been just as famous—the melody is haunting, the falsetto unforgettable, and the imagery universal. What it lacked was freedom to travel. Bangkok went around the world. Beijing was stopped at the gate by the same authorities who claimed to speak for the culture that made it.
Twenty years ago, I could not have made this case in an afternoon. The dots were there. The tools were not. Now they are. So here it is — written in Hong Kong, on a quiet afternoon — for anyone willing to sit with it.
The gap between these two songs is the gap between a culture comfortable in its own skin, and one so loudly, insistently great — apparently — that it cannot afford to weep.
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That it can be said now is perhaps the only answer the old woman at the gate was ever going to get.
I am writing this in the garden of Oil Street, Hong Kong Island. 2004 Volnay in the glass. The song was right — don’t drink too much. But some afternoons? Exactly this.
