Grander Wine Experience at 15
While we Filipinos are by now used to Metro Manila’s traffic woes, on Nov. 13 last year (a Friday the 13th) traffic seemed even a notch more unbearable, especially in the Terminal 3 area — this was the weekend before our country’s hosting of the very crucial Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit. The Skyway leading to Newport City in Pasay was unusually congested, with the bumper-to-bumper traffic jam extending almost a kilometer long. It was barely 5 p.m. when I started the journey from a Quezon City starting point by car to Newport City. I arrived past 7:30 p.m., exhausted. But despite the monstrous traffic and wasted time, I was determined to arrive early for the most illustrious of all annual wine events in the country, the Grand Wine Experience. After all, this was the milestone 15th edition of the event that started in 2001.
The 15th Grand Wine Experience boasted off a much larger venue (double the size of the previous year’s venue), around 8,000 square meters in space, courtesy of the newly opened Grand Ballroom wing of the Marriott Manila.
The Grand Wine Experience is the brilliant brainchild of Ralph Lim Joseph, the second among four Joseph brothers (Bobby, Ronnie and Raymond being the other three) who own the country’s biggest wine distribution company, Philippine Wine Merchants. The idea came to Ralph when he thought that the Philippines — and Metro Manila in general — has no big international-standard wine event. There were several wine dinners and wine gatherings from the likes of Bacchus International, Inc., the International Food & Wine Society, and from other importers and wine clubs, but all were much smaller. Ralph wanted something with much more grandeur.
As youngest sibling Raymond Joseph recalled how the concept evolved: “As our wine business keeps growing, we are being flooded with wine samples for tasting from wineries all over the world. Being one of the biggest wine importers, we receive e-mails from wine suppliers wanting us to import and distribute their wines all the time, and we would require samples for us to taste ourselves before choosing which wines to carry. Eventually there was just too much to taste and try, that made us decide to invite friends who appreciate wine and who would give us objective feedback. This concept, applied in a larger scale, is what the Grand Wine Experience is basically about, and Ralph spearheaded this project into reality.”
But why choose November to stage this annual event? November was the chosen month because it is a cooler period in our country and yet not as busy as December. Ralph said that the original forecast for participants was a modest 300 people with a hotel venue being the ideal choice. The ballroom of the defunct Mandarin Oriental was the first venue. Ralph remembered that Rustan’s and Starbucks of the Tantoco-Lopez families were the Grand Wine Experience’s first major sponsors and supporters. “Rustan’s and Starbucks committed to 200 tickets for the initial Grand Wine Experience and that gave us a great cushion to meet and exceed our 300 people target.”
Ralph went out of his way to invite fellow wine importers to join this event. It was unheard of in the past to have a large wine importer like Philippine Wine Merchants asking competing importers to join its event. Ralph was adamant about getting other wine importers involved to ensure more brands were being featured for the wine-savvy Grand Wine Experience customers.
“This was an event conceived to be the biggest wine gathering in the country, and we actually encouraged all wine importers to feature their best wines at the Grand Wine Experience.”
Ralph also insisted on a P3,000 ticket per head. At that time, this was already very stiff, considering that buffets even at the most expensive five-star hotel would cost around P2,000 per head, maximum. Ralph insisted that the high price allowed the Grand Wine Experience to get the best buffet menu money can buy, and there was even free flowing wines to boot. The gamble to stick with a high ticket price worked and now the Grand Wine Experience is already a tradition even at a record price of P5,000 per ticket last year.
Due to the modest expectation for its first foray into a huge wine event, the first Grand Wine Experience was a big success for Ralph and the rest of Philippine Wine Merchants. It was therefore decided that the event would be staged annually henceforth. The venue moved from Mandarin Oriental to The Peninsula Manila the next year in 2002, and then to the Makati Shangri-La, the year after that. The New World Hotel would host the Grand Wine Experience five times in between another round at Mandarin Oriental, The Peninsula Manila, and Makati Shangri-La. Then in 2011, the then-new Marriott Hotel in Newport City, Pasay hosted the Grand Wine Experience, and this hotel has been the event’s home ever since, including the recently concluded 15th year celebration at its newly opened extension wing, the Marriott Grand Ballroom. This event drew almost 2,000 thirsty paying customers.
The vision to be the biggest “wine dinner” in Asia has been achieved, and Philippine Wine Merchants deserves all the credit for getting this ambitious project off the ground, and further taking this event to newer heights.
Ralph Joseph went out of his way to invite fellow wine importers to join this event. It was unheard of in the past to have a large wine importer like Philippine Wine Merchants asking competing importers to join its event. Ralph was adamant about getting other wine importers involved to ensure more brands were being featured for the wine-savvy Grand Wine Experience customers.
The author has been a member of the Federation Internationale des Journalists et Ecrivains du Vin et des Spiritueux or FIJEV since 2010. For comments, inquiries, wine event coverage, and other wine related concerns, e-mail the author at protegeinc@yahoo.com. He is also on Twitter at twitter.com/sherwinlao.