MANILA, Philippines ? The most interesting private dinner of late 2008 in Metro Manila was perhaps one people didn?t know about, for it was held in utmost secrecy.

Held in the home of a business/industry titan, it gathered 30 of the country?s Who?s Who, with diverse interests and clouts but sharing a consuming passion: fine covetable wine.

They sat down to a gourmet dinner to relish and discourse on glasses of Château Margaux, the French wine with a heritage derived from over 400 years.

Château Margaux officials led by director general Paul Pontallier and business development director Aurélien Valance flew in from France, with executives of leading wine merchant Ficofi?founding chairman and CEO Philippe Capdouze, and director/head of Asia Pacific Christophe Bourrié.

For the exclusive dinner, they brought from the Château Margaux estate bottles of vintage years many a wine connoisseur dream to have: 1989, 1995 and 1998 Château Margaux, 2000 Pavillon Rouge du Château Margaux, 2005 Pavillon Blanc du Château Margaux.

The dinner was a privilege extended by a private host to the select gathering. It wasn?t even a selling jaunt for the wine officials. However, in an exclusive sit-down with the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net), the Château Margaux executives shared interesting observations about the growing wine investment?yes, investment?in the world, especially Asia.

Stocks, derivatives, mutual funds, every financial mutant imaginable?these traditional investments suddenly don?t seem like safe havens today. However, even long before the world economy began to unravel, a highly select market has already been investing in wine.

In the Philippines alone, claimed a regional banker, wine investment could run to an estimated tens of millions of pesos a year; that in Japan or another rich country in Asia could be triple that.

Pontallier said in the past two years, the Asian wine market has been fast approaching the level of Europe and the US. His group regularly meets with Ficofi clients to be in touch with the markets of, say, Korea and Singapore.

Passion, obsession

Why are investors lured to investing in wine?

Passion. Obsession. There are people to whom fine wine is a passion that surpasses all else (passion for wife included?), so much so that their lifestyle revolves around it. And what fans the flames of passion in this case is the fact that mastery of wine is a lifetime work. It?s an elusive craft, where the pursuit of excellence is like running toward a finish line you never do reach.

Pontallier notes a recent direction: ?What has changed in 10 years is that our market isn?t limited to the traditional anymore. In more and more places, people are into fine cuisine [likewise, fine wine]?in the Philippines, Thailand, Eastern Europe.?

Love of fine wine is like a John Updike novel?it?s an acquired taste. It needs your full concentration, if not commitment, unlike, say, a John Grisham.

Château Margaux is a wine that has won such commitment, across time and wine-connoisseur demographics. To its devotees, it is a heritage, as its literature says, ?that shows both the greatness and uncertainty of human destinies...heritage left by a succession of families as well as the power of nature.?

Its land in Bordeaux, the south of France, dating back to the 10th century, covers more than 200 hectares, but only 80 is wine acreage?a strict selection based on excellent soil.

Château Margaux is coveted precisely because of this strict selection?a limited yield born out of the unique combination of terrain and natural conditions, and Pontallier added, ?weather and soil and technical decisions.?

It is what Pontallier and many others of like mind call ?the gifted soil??an asset or factor in wine-making which some countries have managed to turn into an issue or point of debate now, but that is another story.

Defining difference

But for a heritage like Château Margaux, terroir is the defining difference. ?At the end of the 17th century,? its brochure stated, ?it became part of the nascent elite ?First Growths?...Since then, Château Margaux has known fame and fortune, seeing by experience how ephemeral both are...as wars and crises often weakened the efforts of the owners and their teams. But terroir always remains the recourse that makes possible every rebirth.

?Terroir is to wine what heredity is to man, i.e. both everything and nothing,? it continues. ?Everything, because without it, nothing is possible; nothing, because it is only revealed through the experience of man?s work.?

The primary factors that make up the ?terroir of a grand cru? are soil and climate. The climate allows the ?grapes to reach perfect, harmonious maturity.?

There are good years, and not so good years. The 14th century, for instance, Pontallier cited, was somehow warm, and the 16th century a very cold era.

The soil could give that unique, infinitesimal difference, so that ?very small variations, even between neighboring vineyard rows, can translate into enormous differences in a wine?s quality.?

Grape varieties are grown, chosen and aged?that?s where the human factor comes in, the technical decisions Pontallier spoke of??lots of care and hard work that could make a good wine a better wine.?

It is claimed that through the decades, the Château Margaux 1953, 1961, 1982 and others not only appeal to the palate but also, as its literature says, ?stir our emotions...a feeling not linked to any particular tastes and emotions...but from the subtle harmony of the whole.?

Then time does its part.

Pontallier offered an interesting way of describing the creation of fine wine: ?Wine is like people, your children. You raise them in the same environment, but some are gifted, others not so. Sometimes you adapt to the genetic potential.?

But, he adds, ?great wines are a medium of happiness.? Exactly what titans need in the face of today?s stock market. TSS