Carte blanche

"When I first went to culinary school at the age of 14 I knew close to nothing about wine, apart from white and red. It was all a mystery. I became interested while doing internships in restaurants with huge wine cellars of 30,000 and 40,000 bottles. At first, I could not understand why someone would pay 2,000 euros for a bottle of wine; why spend so much money on wine?"

Once Masschelein entered the workforce properly, working at Michelin-starred restaurants in Belgium and France, he came to fully appreciate just why people become so passionate about Bordeaux and Burgundy.

It was not long before the talented young sommelier came to the attention of celebrity chef Daniel Boulud, who offered Masschelein a job in New York City, working as assistant sommelier at Daniel restaurant.

Promotion came quickly in the shape of a posting to Boulud's first venture in Asia, Maison Boulud a Pekin, working in tandem with ace maitre d' Ignace Lecleir, a fellow Belgian, and American chef Brian Reimer. The Qianmen 23 restaurant rapidly became established as a top freestanding Western restaurant in the city, known for its peerless service, innovative food and well thought out wine list.

Masschelein's skills later came to the attention of senior management at the Shangri-La group when they were recruiting staff for the new China World Summit Wing hotel. Two years ago, at 26, Masschelein found himself being offered the job of sourcing all the wines for the hotel's gourmet restaurant, Grill 79, and lounge-cum-nightclub, Atmosphere.

Needless to say, his Belgian catering-college contemporaries are not enjoying quite such a stellar career; most are still working their way slowly gradually up the food and beverage managerial ladder in Europe, rather than presiding over the wine list in a prestigious five-star Beijing hotel restaurant.

"I always look at the wine list like I am going to the restaurant myself, I am not always ready to spend a lot," says the lanky, fast-talking Masschelein. "We have a lot of the smaller wineries represented, stuff that is not that easy to find anywhere else in Beijing, obscure wineries and regions. There are also some bigger names but we try to stay away from the bigger names.

"Personally, I don't have a preferred region, or taste, I don't even have a favorite wine; something I might drink now would be different to last night. Everything good is to my taste.

"I get to taste expensive wines and good wines; there are a lot of people coming to the hotel that love wine, we end up talking about wine and tasting wines. Regular customers also bring in new wines that they have come across."

Clearly, though, Masschelein's proudest achievement is putting together a list that has good-value wines in the mid-range price bracket, no mean feat given that high duties and taxes on imported wine. In total there are almost 750 labels on the wine list, including the Summit and Family Reserve from the highly rated Silver Heights winery in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region.

"Chinese are becoming more knowledgeable about wine," he says.

"When people here started drinking wine, the first wine they heard about was Bordeaux, which has the longest history. Now, people are discovering Burgundies, champagne and white wine more and more.

"When I came to China I had no idea what to expect. It's a great place to be if you are in the food and beverage industry, probably the best place in the world right now.

"There are nice places in Europe or the US, but they are there and they are not going to change. This is the place to learn."