A Hong Kong sommelier puts her taste buds to the test, with a week in Champagne on the line

Testing your wits in a wine competition can be nerve-racking, with contestants required to use their taste buds, palate memory and good old-fashioned intuition. At the recent Ruinart Sommeliers Challenge, at the Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, the morning started with a lecture by the champagne house’s chef de cave, Frédéric Panaïotis. The topic was rosé champagne, which accounts for about 10 per cent of total production in the Champagne region of France (in...