Grapevine 2.0

A new wine bar in ifc mall, Amo Eno, aims to get oenophiles tweeting about its considerable collection of unusual and rare vintages. Helen dalley meets owners ANDREW and BROOK BRADBURY

THE NERVE CENTRE of most wine bars is a well-stocked cellar – preferably one featuring dusty, aged bottles of elusive French vintages – but for Amo Eno, a stylish new hangout on the third level of ifc mall, the focal point is an interactive, multi-touch LCD table engineered by Microsoft and Samsung that encourages guests to get educated about what they’re drinking, and share their wine discoveries through built-in Facebook and Twitter platforms.

Founded by husband-and-wife partnership Andrew and Brook Bradbury, this wine bar with a tech twist stocks more than 700 vintages, and the couple is eager to introduce Hong Kong palates to grapes from unchartered regions including Tasmania, Washington State and Uruguay. To satisfy Greater China’s thirst for the finest, most expensive vintages – increasingly Burgundy over Bordeaux, according to Founder/Director Andrew – these atypical offerings are supplemented by a rare wine wall and a museum-worthy range of glassware and accessories – mostly crafted by individual designers not available elsewhere in Hong Kong, and sourced by Design Director Brook.

“We’re more influenced by high-end fashion than we are by wine retailers, and our mission was to create an upscale wine brand,” says Andrew in the wine bar’s tasting room, where we sit on transparent, high-backed chairs illuminated by a quirky wine-glass chandelier that confirms the couple’s status as self-professed design junkies, as do the dark slate plates and sleek flight tray on which the food and wine are served. “I don’t see any difference between us and a fashion or beauty store. Ultimately, we’re all doing the same thing: selling a product.”

While some of the wine decanters and glasses displayed in Amo Eno’s window are more form than function – such as an oddly shaped decanter from Kemushi – the technology is practicality personalised. “Customers don’t have to log in,” Andrew explains. “All they do is choose their wine and then scan a card on the table that shows them the wines, which they can rate and review after tasting. You can search, say, Cabernet Sauvignons from the Napa Valley, and the system will show you what we have. You then compare the flavor profiles before buying, then choose your size depending on whether you want a sip [25ml], taste [50ml] or whole glass [75ml].”

The difference between Amo Eno (Latin for “love wine”) and other bars that promote tasting and wine education, such as Tastings or California Vintage, is that guests are encouraged to review wines to foster an online community as an extension of the brand, while a personal profile keeps track of your likes and dislikes and suggests new wines to sample, based on your preferences.

This marrying of wine with technology is nothing new for Andrew. A year after winning the Wilson Daniels Master
Sommelier Scholarship Award in 2000, he developed the world’s first touch-screen eWinebook, an electronic wine list with more than 3,500 selections that’s now used in wine bars and restaurants globally. He founded 55 Degrees in Las Vegas in 2004, and Clo in New York in 2006, both of which encouraged guests to hunt for wines electronically. With both bars now closed – something Andrew attributes to bad timing financially and the difficulty of running alcohol-related businesses in the US – the couple headed to Asia.

“Hong Kong is the strongest wine market in the world right now, so it was a logical transition,” says Andrew. “We looked at Tokyo in 2007, then Beijing in 2010, and we were always keen to try our luck in Asia. But when tax was repealed on wine in Hong Kong in 2008, the city seemed like the obvious location.”

Brook adds, “ifc was looking for something different, too. They wanted to offer brands beyond what you see in every mall across the city, and they had seen our concept in New York and liked it.” During the first hour that Amo Eno was open, Andrew says, two developers from mainland China expressed an interest in the concept. While he’s plainly excited by the possibilities of expansion in China, he cautions that, “It’s early days yet. We want to get on our feet and build up an infrastructure here first. But we never wanted to open just one store. The plan has always been to roll out the brand.”

An experienced sommelier – he began his career in 1994 at Salish Lodge & Spa outside Seattle – Andrew has a nose for vintages as well as business. “At one point,” says Brook, “Andrew was probably the most famous sommelier in America, running the wine programme at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas,” which won Wine Spectator magazine’s Award for Grand Excellence in 2000. But, she adds with a laugh, “When we go out, we usually drink margaritas, not wine.”

Andrew elaborates, “I used to have hundreds of pages of tasting notes and this huge wine library, and could tell you the subsoil of most of the major vineyards. But I realised that in spite of all my studying, there was still so much I didn’t know. So I stopped reading about wine and began thinking about how to sell it instead. It’s daunting at times: there are all these different scores and point systems that I can’t stand, and you go back and forth reviewing these various systems and working out whether they have any merit. I thought there had to be a better way to sell wine to people.”

In addition to an inimitable selection of wines, Amo Eno serves a modest menu dominated by home-cooked favourites such as creamy macaroni cheese, beautifully presented sandwiches and Hong Kongstyle waffles, dreamed up by Brook. “Everything has a wine component,” she says. “For instance, we have Chardonnay in the macaroni and cheese, and cherry sherry with the Hong Kong waffles for dessert. We’re big fans of [hip Soho yakitori restaurant] Yardbird and want to offer something similarly relaxed on the food front, but with more of a ‘comfort food’ component.”

Adds Andrew, “There are very few places to eat in ifc – some have recently been lost to retail – so we’re hoping we can make the most of that.”

Ultimately, he says, it’s not their aim to create just another wine bar/wine retailer – and that’s something they can’t afford to do with a sizeable Watson’s Wine round the corner. “We want Amo Eno to become a destination, and if we open another outlet in Hong Kong, it would have to be in another location and have a totally different feel.” Pop-ups are also on the cards. “The brand is architecturally flexible,” says Andrew with steely determination. “So if someone came to us and said they had anything from 400 square feet to 3,000 square feet, we’d make the concept work.”