the shaky arrows represent turbulence during the flights

1. May 22, 7:30 am
   Pick up wine maker inside ICN’s international area – just off the plane from CDG – and board 8:40am plane to HK. Picked up by a friend of my wine maker at Chek Lap Kok, had lunch, a few drinks, a few drinks, including a coupla beers at Gecko whose owner seems to know everybody in town, and I do mean every single human being crossing his path, amazing… Then dinner, and a few more drinks. Yawn. Harlan’s [IFC Phase 2] is a very nice restaurant. Harlan Goldstein – no brownie points for guessing he’s from New Yawk – is an incredible character, and a very fine chef.
2. May 23/24
   Attend Vinexpo Asia on a booth provided by another provider. Look after wine maker. Pester Korean importers. Skip lunch. Taste wine with visitors. Yawn. Very nice dinners at Indochine 1929 in LFK and, hmmm, ah yes Cuisine Cuisine, a chinese restaurant in IFC. Very nice, and I was fortunate not to have to pick any of the tabs…
   Zeu Sinikeull Tortwaze and Tanukette dropped by at Vinexpo – one business card for two pax, private joke here… Too bad we I didn’t have enough free time to spend with them. Lazy-ass Damien/Heidi didn’t visit Stanley Market Too far my ass. We’re talking about HK, right . Anyway, was nice to meet them, hope we can do a little longer next time…
3. May 24, 11pm
   Check in at Central, train to Chek Lap Kok [mad dash in CLK’s corridors] and plane to Seoul. When did you ever see a plane leave early? Sigh…
   Ah, BTW, an interesting tidbit about Seoul’s one-sided decision to alter Seoul’s *Chinese* name to [in my opinion] redneckish and gawd-awful 首爾. Apparently, HK has converted, at least in writing. Both the PA announcements and the people boarding the plane were using *hon sing* aka 漢城, though… I guess it’ll take a bit longer for people to adjust, eh?
4. May 25, 4:45am
   Arrival in ICN, off to bed/change of clothes/shower
5. May 25, 2:30pm
   Cab to GMP, check in at KAL counter – note that the business lounge is *before* passport control, how retarded is that – and plane to TYO/Haneda, a much better proposal than ICN–NRT, believe me… Nice dinner at Katsura Steak House [a teppanyaki, really, and very nice to boot]. The wines are on the pricey side, but the place is great and the staff could serve as a model to many places I have been to – special thumbs-up to the sommelier.
6. May 26
   Full day with Japanese importer. My head hurts from using continously 3 languages. The wine tastings don’t help either. The food was okay I guess, although there was way too much fish for me…
7. May 27, 10:30am
   Cab to Hamamatsuchō 浜松町, then Monorail to Haneda 羽田, then plane to GMP [reversing the path we had followed 36 hours before], bus to our respective lodgings – yes the wine maker was still tagging along… – then pick up said gentleman at his hotel, and take him to a wine maker dinner at Véraison, a nice wine bar and restaurant across Ibis Hotel, in Taech’i dong.
8. May 28, 7pm
   Dinner with the wine maker and the importer, at 菜根譚, a vegetarian/Buddhist restaurant. Surprisingly good, even if a bit of kalbi woulda been nice
9. May 29, 9.30am
   Meeting with *another* wine maker – well, their export manager – who quite inconveniently managed to insert himself into my busy schedule. But he’s a nice guy, so I complied… Visit of a couple of places selling wines, Walmart and a wine shop on Tosan daero, Wine Family. This was part A of “How plonk is distributed in Korea 101″.
10. May 29, 2pm
    Wine tasting at the importer’s office. My wine maker and travel companion repeats for the umpteenth time the same explanations on his wines to a selection of sommeliers and wine bars owners/managers. Guess who does the translating? Yeah…
11. May 29, 7.30pm
    Wine maker dinner at Wine and Friends, a recently opened wine bar – the owner is a 具氏, yeah the LG-具氏/Koo, which explains why the sommelier of the Intercontinental Grand was here [both Interconti in Seoul belong to LG]. My wine maker, again, repeats for the umpteenth+1 time the same explanations on his wines to, this time a selection of VIPs, including that chick [She’s actually quite small, amazing what photography could make you believe…]. Guess who does the translating, again? By now I am on auto-pilot, and I am not sure that what I said was what the wine maker said then. The overall content was the same, but the order might’ve been “rearranged”…
12. May 30, 8am
    Phone call from the wine maker, from the KAL lounge at ICN. He’s on his way back to Bordeaux, which means I only have one person to cater to. It *was* nice to have him around, but I need to slow down!
13. May 30, 10am
    Pick up said export manager, tour him around the “de luxe” distribution channels for wines and spirits [Lotte Dept Store and the Westin Chosun’s boutique], part B of “How plonk is distributed in Korea 101″, then off to nCheese where we had a wine tasting of Rhône wines – attended by staff from hotels, wine bars and importers. As usual, food at nCheese – no brownie points for guessing what the main item was – and service were outstanding, I am so glad I can count Mrs Lee and Mr. Shin as friends. The wines did OK too, apparently. One hotel deeply regretted that these wines weren’t yet imported – but this was precisely the point of the exercice, after all. Now that we have the potential buyers, convincing the importers shouldn’t be too hard…
14. May 30, 5pm
    Off to visit Galleria’s Main Building and Luxury Brand Building’s wine shops, part C of “How plonk is distributed in Korea 101″. The Main building’s was messy, like most Department store’s wine shops I’ve seen in Korea, whereas Enoteca, in the 명품관, is brilliantly organized, well stocked, and very cool too After all, the wines have to be kept at around 19°, so the whole place is well air-conditionned *and* humidified. The person in charge there is a very efficient and knowledgeable person – especially considering her young age. And, surprisingly, prices are not outrageous – that is, for Korea…
15. May 31, 10am
    Appointment at an importer’s office with the export manager – yes we knew it was election day, but apparently half the company worked, nonetheless; you see, the last few days of the month are very important, since they have to try and make customers pay their monthly bills, and make look the monthly P&L good… Unfortunately, the guy in charge there was lying in bed, still hung over. Needless to say, the export manager wasn’t pleased. At all… I wasn’t either. The drunk’s assistant, who *was* on the bridge, tried to alleviate the atmosphere and make the meeting still worth our time – but what can a guy without decision power do, anyway? 45 minutes later I took the export manager to KCAT and dropped him off…

Ever since I have tried to recover…

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