Beijing Boyce

We shall make our Crouching Malbec from this hidden terroir.

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Heard about the new wine by celebrity shoe designer Jimmy Choo? It’s called Chateau La Feet. Or the latest vintage from movie director Ang Lee? The 2009 Crouching Malbec, Hidden Tannat packs a kick. How about the upcoming wine to celebrate 200 years since the birth of Charles Dickens? It’s a limited edition called Grape Expectations.

Not likely, since I made up all those examples. But making up celebrity wines is at the heart of this year’s contest to mark the Food and Wine Experience at the Hilton Beijing on November 6 (more details here).

This year’s grand prize: two tickets to the event, a room at the Hilton Beijing that night, and breakfast the next day. The runner-up prizes include three pairs of tickets to the trade tasting.

The details:

• Leave a comment and tell us your idea for a celebrity wine.
• The grand prize winner will be picked via a draw. The three pairs of trade tasting tickets will be awarded based on merit.
• You can enter up to five times but need to submit each idea as a separate comment.
• Prizes are to be picked up the day of the event. The room is only valid on the night of November 6, the breakfast only valid on the morning of November 7.
• The deadline for entering is November 2 at noon.

In the meantime, can I offer you a glass of Giorgio Armani’s “hand-pressed” Syrah?

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(Hat tip to Mr Hao for the idea and to Mr Brau and The Wise Bartender for their input.)

Imagine this spoken slowly and in a deep gravelly voice…

It’s the story of a man and a mission that takes him as deep into China’s past as it does into his own, a man more used to knowing the answers than to finding them, a man who hacks through a forest of doubters even as his hands are covered in paper cuts, a man who… oh, screw it… it’s about Julian Fisher, best known as the weekly quiz master at Tim’s Texas BBQ, and a show of his collection of China movie posters and other printed material, all of which are on sale with prices starting at RMB200.

The posters date from 1927 silent movie Foreign Devils (the priciest poster at RMB17000) to more contemporary productions such as Chinatown, Big Trouble in Little China, and The Last Emperor. They are separated by decade into rooms and the rooms are linked by a path that doubles as a time line of key events in China movie history. The show–southwest corner of Sanlitun Soho, lower level, look for the posters out front–runs through Sunday and is open 6 PM to 9 PM on weekdays and all day on the weekend.

If you go on Thursday, you can catch a talk by Simon Fowler of Time Out about his new book, 101 Essential Chinese Movies. The talk starts at 6:30 PM.

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The artwork made this poster one of my faves.