Ao Yun（敖云）– destined, I think, to become one of the world’s great wines – means ‘above the clouds’, which given the amount of time I spend in exactly the same place, makes it one I hope to drink a lot more of in the future
Blog
Travel
On the road from Riyadh to Macau to Brisbane
I will be spending a great deal more of my time in the Kingdom going forward and I will not be alone within the travel retail community.
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Airports
Time, terroir and telling a 300-year story – A Rémy Martin experience
Heritage, passion, time, terroir, humility and knowledge passed down the generations; these themes and many others resonated during a memorable immersion into the world of world of Rémy Martin.
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Travel
Coming to a cinema near you: The Old Man & The Misfiring Laptop
While I would never have been likened to Robert Redford in his prime, the combination of his senior incarnation and the film’s plot did rather remind me of myself. I’m thinking of approaching him regarding a remake.
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Travel
Getting ahead of myself on the road to Riyadh
“Mr Moodie,” the check-in agent said in the tone one usually reserves for an elderly and confused grandparent. “Your flight is not until tomorrow. The 20th.”
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Airports
Landing a scoop in Doha and heading for showtime in Singapore
The recent workload has ensured that neither me nor ‘the website that never sleeps’ reached for the melatonin.
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Events
Courvoisier Spritz anyone?
what did the brilliant DFS management led by Founders Bob Miller and Chuck Feeney do? Simple, they labelled their (effectively) in-house brand (at the time, not today) Camus with a small ‘Camus’ and a big ‘Napoleon’
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Events
Discovering a fresh philosophy in Shenzhen and talking Trinity in Ho Chi Minh City
You don’t go from a start-up, single-shop operation in 1991 to a powerhouse US brand within a few years and the subject of a successful majority divestment to the mighty LVMH before your first decade is out unless you are doing a whole lot of things right.
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Events
How I overcame Severe Tire Damage to become the oldest influencer in town
Before you knew it I was receiving LIVE gifts in appreciation of my efforts. Perhaps it was audience sympathy – they may have thought I was past my ‘cell by’ date – but whatever the reasons the livestream ranked number three in Hainan that day.
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Events
Free as a (Kiwi) bird and flying high in Haikou
With me barely leaving my desk from 6am to midnight for several consecutive days due to needing to get our latest China Travel Retail Report eZine over the line, it has at times felt a rerun of one of many COVID hotel quarantines.
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Food
Discovering Food Accademia’s world of fine flavours at a Hong Kong cha chaan teng
The bowl of chicken pieces had more bones than a 500-year old cemetery, so many it could have modelled for Kiehl’s in fact, but as we chatted we all agreed the offering was delicious.
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Events
Discovering the heritage of three centuries and the tantalising promise of the future
Who knows when the next expression will be released. Or who will be the Cellar Master. Those thoughts do not concern Baptiste but instead enrich him. For his living memory in liquid form will endure through the generations to come.
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Events
An Ospree takes flight amid some InDelhible memories
This bird is much smaller than an eagle and much smaller than any of the large birds you would have heard of. But it flies faster. It’s an agile bird that flies 5,000 miles and… sees its prey miles away. That sounds a lot like us, right?”