The Canadian that sells Aussie wine to the Chinese

Ross Meder fell in love with Margaret River on holiday. Felicity Murray talks to him in his Hong Kong wine shop about how he’s passing on his passion to the Chinese

Canadian born Ross Meder, managing director, Margaret River for Asia, started importing the Australian wines just over 18 months ago when he opened his specialist wine shop in Hong Kong’s up and coming Wanchai district.
It all began, he says, with a holiday to Australia right at a time when he and his Chinese wife and their friends in Hong Kong were beginning to discover wine.
“As you can tell from my fake Australian accent I’m actually from the chilly north – Winnipeg, Canada – but I’ve been in Hong Kong a very, very long time –20 years and counting,” says Meder.
These 20 years however were not spent in the wine trade. He was a journalist working in corporate communications and then for an Internet company. He got into the wine business quite by accident, he says. “Many years ago I worked in Melbourne, Australia. I liked it there very much and for years I nagged my wife, who I’d met and married here in Hong Kong, about going back there someday.
“So when Qantas launched a direct flight from Hong Kong to Perth my wife, unable to resist a bargain, bought some ‘cheapy’ tickets. We had no reason to go there, we didn’t know anyone in Perth, but the day before we left, a friend of hers gave us a clipping from a local paper talking about the Merribrook resort owned by the Firth family in Margaret River. So that’s where we went and we did a couple of wine tours and it was a lot of fun.”
As it happens, Meder’s holiday love affair with Margaret River came at a time when many Hong Kong residents were starting to become interested in wine. “We’d all get together for an evening at the weekend and bring a bottle,” remembers Meder. “We’d call it a tasting but in reality we were just drinking the stuff. And we’d say pretentious things like ‘oh this wine is really oaky’ without knowing what we were talking about.
“I was building websites at the time and I built a website promoting Margaret River as a tourist destination. We talked about opening a wine shop but in the abstract, in the way one might say ‘one day I will take the Orient Express to Moscow’. Then we phoned a friend in the property business to ask if he’d keep an eye out for some premises us and to our surprise he said ‘actually I’ve got a place now’  – so here we are,” he says gesturing around him.
“We wanted to try something different in this part of the world and we also thought it best to know a lot about one thing rather than not a lot about many things. So we talked to a few people in Margaret River and bought a selection of their wines.  A year and a half on, now we’ve got to know our customers, we’re starting to broaden our range of labels.
“When I first arrived in Hong Kong, if you went out for a dinner or a wedding feast and you asked for a drink you were given a choice of either a can of beer – usually a San Miguel and not always a real one – or a full glass of Martell Cognac – nothing in between. Nowadays more Chinese people are drinking wine as part of the dinner,” he says. “At the restaurant across the road almost every table will have a bottle of wine as opposed to a glass of beer.
But, as Meder explains, they either buy whatever is on sale in the supermarket or they go to other end of the scale and buy “Chateau La Snooty” at HK$3,000 a bottle. The view being that it must be good if it’s French and it’s expensive. The choice also has a lot to do with status.” Although, since he opened his shop, Meder says he has been “watching these ends come towards the middle”.
The clientele was initially 90% westerners, 10% Chinese and now it is probably 60/40, he says. “A Chinese woman came in one day just after we opened and she looked at my wife then looked at the sign and looked back at my wife and said ‘of course you must be Margaret’. We thought oh boy! We have a lot of explaining to do.
“Some people do come in that know Australian wines well and ask for specific labels such as Cape Mentelles and Leeuwin Estates - fabulous wines but that’s not we do here, we focus on the smaller family wineries.
“We are getting more Chinese people coming in now  – especially young people as they are more willing to try new ideas. They ask a lot of questions and do a lot of research on the internet and they are willing to come back and try something else – so I spend a lot of time talking about wines.
“We know our wines pretty well and we really do try to match wines to people. I think that’s one of the things that makes our shop different and one of the reasons why we are still here.”
Meder’s shop is in an area, which is becoming increasingly cosmopolitan with a Portugese restaurant and an Italian restaurant – each serving their respective country’s wines – plus an international wine bar and a French wine shop. “It’s an area that’s attracting people that have an interest in food and wine,” he says. Meder puts the survival of his Margaret River shop down to its specialist nature but undoubtedly it also has a lot to do with the infectious passion for all things Margaret River that Meder exudes to all who enter. 
Meder also acts as a local agent for Margaret River with “a couple of guys pounding the pavements” selling the wine into hotels and restaurants. His original idea was to have a wine showroom, not a retail shop but, as he says, “people came in and bought”.
The Zero import duty in Hong Kong combined with the low value of the Australian dollar is certainly helping Meder buy and sell quality wines at a reasonable price. “Increasingly we are getting people coming into the shop and saying ‘I don’t know any of these wines so how about we put together a mixed case – one of each’.”
“We have a nice little business here and in tough times it seems retail is not such a bad place to be. People may cut back a little on their wine consumption but they are more likely to come in here to pick up a 200 dollar bottle to take home or to a friend’s house than buy a 500 or 300 dollar bottle in a restaurant. Actually last month was our best month ever.
Meder admits to being a total failure when it comes to speaking Mandarin and Cantonese. “On the days my wife is in the shop the local people feel more comfortable about coming in. With me they feel intimidated because they’re not wine experts. Some feel that if they are not seen to be buying ‘Chateaux La Snooty’ then people will think they know nothing about wine.
“When they come in here they are very sheepish to begin with,” he explains. “So what I do for those who don’t like to ask my advice is place the bottles with lots of awards medals on them in clear view and, sure enough, they will choose them. But it does make a big difference when we have a Cantonese person in the shop.”
Because of its fashionable location, the shop has become a neighborhood place for a chat, which says Meder helps draw in even more people.
In the centre of the shop is a long tall table with high stools where Meder holds tastings and wine courses for 8-12 people at a time. “In a way it’s become our trade mark, he says. “And what we’d like to be able to do one day is sell wine by the glass.
“But,” he adds “as a one man band, I am becoming wary of doing too many events and promotions as I’m the one who is here until one or two in the morning washing up.”