Beijing Boyce

Some know him for opening one of Beijing’s first non-hotel bars – the creatively named Frank’s Place (1990). Some know him for his later establishment - John Bull Pub. And yet others know him as the Tuesday night quizmaster.

What fewer know is that during the past year, Frank Siegel has built a Beijing wine community via Friday night tastings at the Sanlitun branch of Sequoia Cafe. BB sat down with “The Frank” recently for his take on the tastings, the funnest events he’s been to over the past 20 years, what it takes to make it in the business, and whether it’s true that he’s a big fan of Algerian wines.

Go here for the full interview and for topless photos of Frank (kidding). I’ve moved the interview to below:

Frank Siegel has been holding Friday night wine tastings in the Sanlitun branch of Sequoia Café for the better part of a year. The tastings have covered white, red, rose, and sparkling wines, producers from six continents, and themes ranging from blind tastings to bring your own bottle. I sat down last Saturday for a short talk with “The Frank”, who with wife Jennifer also owns another Sequoia Café near Ritan Park and formerly owned Frank’s Place, one of the first non-hotel bars in Beijing when it opened in 1990, and John Bull Pub.

Which three Friday night wine tasting themes are your favorites?
I like the offbeat ones, like the Canadian wine and cheese tasting or the Livermore [California] tasting – that was fun because I’m familiar with the area and even though it’s not famous I can tell people something about the wines. I liked the Cabernet Franc tasting because it’s an unusual variety for Beijing – my tasting was probably the first one – and I visited one of the wineries – Ironstone.

I also liked the blind tasting of Malbec from Argentina. I like doing blind tastings and Malbec is off the beaten path. [What about the Slovenia event?] That’s the one where I didn’t run out of wine. We left at one in the morning – Alan [Ujcic] brought cases of wine. [And the Algerian event?] Uh, no, that wouldn’t be a favorite.

What trends do you see emerging in your wine tastings?
I think what sets our tastings apart is the casual setting. We have a lot of people who know a lot about wine and they talk to people who don’t know as much. People aren’t intimated or afraid to express opinions. In some places, if you don’t know much about wine, you can get hammered for your opinions and tastes. That doesn’t happen here. People are learning in an informal way. I also learn a lot, from Alain (Leroux, the winemaker at Taillan) and others.

What are the biggest challenges you see for people looking to enter the wine industry?
Who to sell it to – distribution is the number one challenge. You have these producers from France and Southern Australia, and they all want to come to China. There so many wines, how do you make yours stand out – is it price point or what? How do you get the wine into the market?

Chinese aren’t sitting on docks waiting to buy wines. It’s a lot of work to sell this stuff. That’s why I’m not interested in distribution. Everyone talks about big distributors like ASC and Summergate, but you have a second wave where younger kids are coming in and handpicking wines from smaller producers. There are young French or German guys who are passionate about wine, close to the producer, and putting in a lot of effort to knock on doors.

You’ve been in Beijing on and off for over 20 years. What are the three best wine dinners or tastings you’ve attended here?

(1) The first Hilton “Wine Experience” – that was around ten years ago. It was a three-day event and we tried to go home the first night and didn’t make it, and ended up staying two nights. Ouch. You had an amazing vertical Penfold’s Grange tasting. You had Marimar Torres giving a class. All these heavy hitters came into China and there were two sessions in the mornings, two sessions in the afternoons, and two or three classes per session.

(2) The [1992-2001] vertical Shafer tasting earlier this year and dinner afterward – I always enjoy sitting down and doing tastings with the winemaker. I gave Doug Shafer a pretty hard time. He asked if there were any dogs, and I said the ’92. Then he said he made some crappy wine in the 1980s and would give a bottle of Hillside Select to anyone who could guess the rating he got. I said 68 and was right. He said, “Hey, you’re the guy who hated the ’92!” Anyway, he ended up giving me a bottle of mineral water and after dinner I ended up talking to him about the wines – that was pretty cool.

(3) About five or six years, there was a guy named Glen Wheatley with the WAB (Wine Appreciation Bunch). Glen did an event where he put the same wine in paper, plastic and wine glasses, and it was amazing how differently they tasted. At another table, he served the same wine from bottles that were open a short time, one day and five days. Again, you could really taste the difference. He did all sorts of things like that. Anyway, Glen needed volunteers and a friend of mine and I agreed to do a shift, but ours was the last one, so we had time to go through all the tables first!

The next day, I got a call from a friend at the Foreign Commercial Service that a Napa Valley wine delegation was coming through. I said I couldn’t do it because of the WAB event the night before. She said, “Frank, you have to come, it’s going to be really good.”

We went to a restaurant in the Forbidden City and had Chinese food with some winemakers from boutique Napa wineries. One of the winemakers was descended from an aristocratic European family and the other was an ex-Indy 500 racecar driver named Randy Lewis – he was a hoot and makes 8500 cases a year that he sells at 50 to 100 bucks a bottle, so he doesn’t need to sell in China, he just loves to come here. It was fun watching these two very different winemakers having fun. The thing I like about many winemakers is how approachable and friendly they are, wherever they are from. These folks make topflight wines but are still down to earth. Anyway, we looked in the corner and saw all the wine, and thought there’d be some extra bottles, but we ended up drinking everything. Randy’s a great winemaker – his wine was number seven on Wine Spectator’s list last year.

How did you get interested in wine?
B and B [a Beijing social group called Beef and Burgundy]. One of my customers was a member and said I should join – it wasn’t just to make contacts [as the club includes many businesspeople and diplomats], but because it seemed like a fun group. I started enjoying wine there and my interest accelerated. I went back to the states for a couple of years, from the end of 1999 to 2002, to Seattle. All of the major tasting rooms in Washington State were 20 minutes from my house. I also traveled around California, and Portland, and had the chance to taste wines.

The thing I like about wine as opposed to the bar industry is that many women enjoy it and it attracts people from all sorts of cultures – it’s really a nice-cross section of people. I like that a lot.

(By the way, they say nice guys finish last. Help me avoid that fate, and save yourself a lifetime of gnawing guilt, by going here, scrolling to Beijing Boyce, and clicking the “+” sign until it turns green. Then, relax in the knowledge you’ve made a (somewhat) young bar reviewer’s day brighter.)