LU Yang is China's most decorated sommelier and he uses his Canadian training to promote wine as a "down-to-earth agricultural product that deserves to be enjoyed and appreciated by everyone." He talks to Gao Ceng.

Sommelier Lu Yang compares himself to a German Mosel Rieseling, "clean and pure with both light sweetness and sharp acidity, both implicit and substantive."

The 31-year-old wine steward also describes himself as "hard-working, goal-oriented, fortunate and overrated."

Lu is the top sommelier in China, one of Asia's best.

A sommelier is romantically described as a person weaving a spell of imagination and constructing a deep dialogue with wine and food. Basically, he's deeply knowledgeable about wine and pairing it with food.

But Lu doesn't agree completely.

"Being a sommelier is actually about pairing wine with a person," Lu told Shanghai Daily in a recent interview in Hong Kong, where he is wine director at Shangri-La International Hotel Management. He is the first mainland Chinese to hold the position. Previously he was chief sommelier at The Peninsula Shanghai for three years, leaving in July.

Lu cites the classic example of many Western wine experts, including Robert Parker, who pair sweet white wine with Sichuan cuisine to balance its heat and spice. But Sichuanese and other Chinese diners appreciate the spicy, hot taste and choose strong, distilled grain liquor baijiu to fan the flames.

"For customers who love spicy food, why not pair Sichuan food with Zinfandel or Syrah, high in alcohol, to make the food taste more spicy?" Lu asks.

"Wine pairing can be more flexible as long as larger principles are observed. If you analyze too much, you can lose plenty of direct pleasure," he says.

Prestigious honor

Lu has a varied biography: Born in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, he returned to Shanghai, his father's hometown, for middle school, then moved to Canada to study physics in Toronto. He switched to viticulture.

Lu recently passed the Advanced Sommelier (AS) examination in England, organized by the Court of Master Sommeliers (CMS), the most authoritative examiner of credentials. He was the first Chinese and the second Asian to pass the exam. Only around 500 sommeliers can write AS after their name.

He's just one step away from Master Sommelier (MS), one of the highest accreditations, and plans to take the exam next year. The other top accreditation is Master of Wine, but Lu isn't rushing.

He acknowledges that some wine insiders consider the AS certificate useless, saying wine is for drinking, not exams, noting that masters such as Robert Parker don't hold any certificate.

But still Lu believes that "certificates are one of the few things available in a fast-paced era filled with self-promoters to prove my abilities objectively."

He attributes his success largely to the emerging Chinese wine market.

Global vintners and distributors see China as a vast and growing market with irresistible potential, rushing to sell their wines in China. They need knowledgeable sommeliers to help them win Chinese customers.

"We, Chinese sommeliers, have access to diverse wine, from big-name chateaux to some unknown interesting wines," Lu says.

In a new and immature market with few knowledgeable consumers, many people unquestioningly admire Chinese wine experts, including sommeliers, critics, writers and educators.

"There's a gap between the reputation of these experts, including me, and their level of expertise. I am overrated," Lu says.

Though he's planning to take the MS exam, right now he's adapting to his new job.

New journey

Lu made a name for himself over three years as chief sommelier at The Peninsula Shanghai. When he left the hotel in July, insiders were watching for his next stage in his career.

They found out soon enough. Lu is now writing a sommelier's manual and establishing Shangri-La Group's vision, strategy and wine standards. It will be published within the hotel group next month.

The manual or Sommeliers' Guide will ensure the wine experience in Shangri-La Paris and Shangri-La Qingdao are at the same level, says Jean Marc Dizerens, director of corporate food and beverage (operations).

"He perfectly fits the position. To enhance the wine image of the hotel group, with half of its hotels in China, Yang not only has solid wine knowledge but also knows how to communicate with our Asian staff," Dizerens says.

It doesn't hurt that Lu is a star.

"Whether you go to a first- or second-tier city in China, people see him as an inspiration and a model of a Chinese achieving his dream. Many Chinese in the wine industry ask themselves 'If Yang can do it, why can't I'," says Dizerens, who has worked in China for 10 years and is familiar with the effect of star power in motivating people.

Lu's celebrity started at his previous position in Shanghai - he even gave more interviews than senior hotel management.

"Yang is a bridge linking Western wine culture with Chinese, not just linguistically but also culturally," says Terrence Crandall, an executive chef and a former colleague of Lu's.

In the past few years, Lu has promoted wine culture by teaching classes. He also translated the "How To Taste Wine" (2011) by Jancis Robinson from English into Chinese. The popular book is used in many wine appreciation classes.

Communicator

When Lu worked as a sommelier at the Shanghai five-star hotel on the Bund, Chinese represented half of his customers and many know little about wine. But Lu sold out many wines on his list and developed his own approach to explaining and serving wine to Chinese customers.

"My wine philosophy transmitted to the customer is 'Don't see wine as too serious.' Although there are some expensive, even sacred wines that can touch your heart, under most circumstances wine should not be an indicator of elite group like an Hermes bag, but purely a down-to-earth agricultural product that deserves enjoyed and appreciated by everyone," Lu says.

When diners say they know nothing and are mystified by the wine list, Lu always smiles and says, "That's not a problem." He then serves several different samples, depending on what they plan to order.

"After customers drink the wine, which relaxes them, I chat casually, read them quickly and recommend the right wine," the sommelier says. He also subtly guides returning wine beginners.

Lu compares wine to abstract painting. At first, many people get nothing from it, unless someone helps them appreciate it. "That's not cheating but a way of guiding people to better enjoy wine," Lu says.

The Chinese edition of "How to Taste Wine" translated by Lu is the most popular book in Chinese Amazon's wine category.

"The small book ends my confusion about wine. There's no flowery language, no pretentious showing off wine knowledge, but simply sharing master-level expertise. Real thanks to Robinson and Lu Yang," wrote reader Chen Tao on the Amazon website.

"Lu is a talented translator. Youth gives his translation a lively character. His professionalism standardizes Chinese wine vocabulary (referring to grape varieties and production areas)," says Qiu Hong, senior editor of the publisher, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore.

Initially Lu translated the book out of personal interest because it inspired him during his wine studies. But it was hard work and Lu calls it his first and last translation.

"I would rather die than translate again. Jancis' British English with subordinate clauses is a huge challenge," Lu explains.

Lu is also a certified wine educator in China, teaching WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust) courses to nurture wine professionals.

"He's humble and flexible and doesn't follow all the old rules. His blackboard writing with numerous arrows and his focus on practical wine-tasting impresses me," says Jeuce Huang, managing director of Taste.ly Communication and one of Lu's students.

"I am not a professional teacher but a kind one. I care about my student a lot," Lu says,

His efforts to promote wine culture in China won him an invitation to address Wine Future Hong Kong 2011, the year's premiere even in the global wine industry. He was one of only mainland speakers and he discussed "The Chinese Wine Palate."

"I never thought one day I would stand beside Robert Parker and Jancis Robinson," the young sommelier says. "I mainly argued for giving the Chinese market more respect and showing patience."

Chinese wine consumers should be treated the same as Westerners, however, winemakers from both the New World and Old World now try to make wine especially to appeal to the "Chinese palate," Lu tells Shanghai Daily.

"The so-called Chinese palate doesn't exist. The world is flat. Chinese, especially the younger generation, grow up with Coca-Cola and hamburgers. We have the same wine palate as Westerners, starting out preferring fruity wine with a sweet touch and gradually turning to wine with complexity," Lu says.

He resents Western wine snobs who dismiss China's developing taste. At the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, Lu dined with representatives of a famous Bordeaux chateau.

"After a Frenchman got drunk, he told me contemptuously, 'In 2008, when the world financial crises crushed the two big wine markets in the UK and the US, it was the Chinese who kept us alive by buying plenty of our cheap wine'," he recalls.

Desert beginnings

Karamay in northern Xinjiang is where Lu started out and got a feel for nature.

"I was born to the hospitality industry since I am always smiling," he says, recalling that no matter how sad he was, he would always smile for a camera.

"Sometimes, especially when I am working, smiles are like bandages covering up my pain," Lu says.

He calls Karamay "a place where the blue sky is close at hand, the horizon is distant and the Gobi Desert is underfoot. It's the most beautiful memory of my life."

When he was 12 years old, Lu moved to Shanghai, since his father is Shanghainese. In middle school, his favorite subject was geography, which contributed to his interest in wine terroir and production areas.

When he was 19, he went to Toronto, Canada, to study physics at the University of Toronto.

After two years, he found himself drawn to alcohol and idleness, in his own words. He dropped out but had always been drawn to local vineyards.

"Grape vines told me that wine was what I would do seriously," he says.

He studied viticulture at Niagara College, calling those two years the hardest in his life since he knew nothing about wine while many classmates already were sommeliers.

"When they talked about notes of peach, mushroom, tobacco and honey in wine, I thought that was total bullshit," Yang says.

His parents were upset when he quit physics since they wanted him to become a respected professor. That meant he had to finance his own wine studies.

He graduated with a sommelier's certification from the International Sommelier Guild and became a winemaker's assistant at Le Clos Jordanne, a winery in Niagara. Eight months there gave him invaluable information not found in books.

He then became a sommelier's assistant at Canoe, a fine dining restaurant in Toronto, where he learned about wine serving and managing a cellar.

In 2010, when he was 29, Lu returned to Shanghai and became a sommelier.

Today in Hong Kong, he says, "I have no life but work with wine." When he dines out with his friends, he takes notes on the wines.

He spends his holidays visiting wine production areas. He studies and teaches.

"I need some space of my own," Lu admits. "Marinating in wine all day long creates some aesthetic fatigue."

He says it's time to take up a very different hobby, riding big motorcycles. His dream is to own a Harley-Davidson.

'Fake experts'

Lu remains dedicated to the Chinese wine industry, but describes some of it as "frivolous, profit-driven, and filled with dilettantes marketing themselves as experts."

Once he was furious with those "experts," but he's mellowed, saying. "When we look back in 10 years, we'll see the benefits of 'fake experts' outweigh the damage, since they attract people and stimulate curiosity."

One day he plans to make his own wine, saying "the vineyard is a place that's pure and simple."

His dream is to open his own wine bar in Shanghai, where he can promote his wine philosophy. He's waiting for the right time and place. "It will be funky and natural, probably decorated with swings and my favorite paintings," he says. The wines will high-quality boutique drops "with affordable prices so more people can really enjoy the beauty of wine."