of course, when opinionated people have something in their head, they do not have it anywhere else as they say.

worst, they are the types who will look for and highlight every single little arguments in favour of that idea until their point is proven right.

worst still, they will gloat and seriously rub it in when they can find real life examples to demonstrate that very idea to the point of, as my father always warned me about, to "oversell" it to death.

well, i am exactly that type of people and tastings wine bar in hong kong is exactly that kind of real life experience that gets me super excited.

after dinner at yung kee 10 days ago, i brought chris, mike, alex, and jeff over for a "different" kind of wine bar to see if this new concept "sticks".

stuck around we did and seriously unstuck my wallet became! tastings wine bar is different in that it has 5 enomatic wine dispensing machines and as i had described the concept before on those pages, the idea is that you buy a prepaid card with the amount of funds that you want to put in, go to the dispenser, select the wine you want to taste/drink and select among 3 choices of pour sizes.

the key here is that the smallest pour size is just enough for a taste, an "ombra"as the italians call it. just enough so that it helps you decide whether you want to drink a whole glass (or the whole bottle if you are that thirsty). my flickr contact "sunday driver" has a great set of pictures on her flicker that she took at tastings.

with 8 bottles installed on each enomatic, we had 40 wines to taste, and tasted we did!

the selection was varied and interesting, enough for us to spend the whole evening tasting the whole range available, sip by sip. some were expensive to taste (but were great experiences in themselves), like the opus one from the famed napa valley mondavi/rothshild partnership, but most were reasonable and helped us to make some very interesting discoveries - like the south african syrah (the foundry 2004) which we all agreed was the best value for money we had all night - a wine i would have never selected from a wine list otherwise. the owner, charlene dawes, later told me that they plan to change the selection at least once a month so that their guests have maximum opportunities to taste and discover. a great concept and a great way to try out all kinds of wine and build a database of those that you might want to enjoy more fully later on.

well worth the visit.

tastings wine bar: basement, yuen yick bldg., 27-29 wellington st., central, hk, tel: 2523 6282