This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Sarah Heller MW wins Asia Personality Award 2024
the drinks business Asia has awarded Sarah Heller MW its esteemed Asia Personality Award 2024 for her enduring commitment to education and wine communication.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Sarah Heller developed an interest in wine at university in the US.
Pausing her degree for six months to work in a restaurant in Italy, it was the country’s wines, not the food, that left a lasting impression on her.
“At that point I was interested in food – I’d got bitten by the chef bug,” she says. “My parents were a little distraught, but they figured if they sent me somewhere to work in a restaurant it would soon get out of my system. Instead it backfired on them, and I started getting really interested in wine, particularly Italian wine, which has continued to be my area of interest.”
After graduating from university, Heller planned to continue working in the US wine industry, where she got her first gig at an importer and distributor in New York. But her plans were halted when she fractured her spine falling into a wine vat, and was forced to return to Hong Kong to recover in 2010.
As it turned out, the injury, from which she made a full recovery, would be the catalyst that shaped the rest of her career. Two years earlier in 2008, Hong Kong ditched its duties on wine, and Heller witnessed firsthand the country’s shift to become Asia’s wine hub. “It was such an exciting time. I don’t think there will ever be a wine market like that again,” Heller says.
In 2017, and with a new baby at home, Heller became the youngest person in the world to achieve the Master of Wine title. Heller is currently wine editor for Tatler Asia, and is on the faculty of the Vinitaly International Academy.
Partner Content
Even through her focus on Italian wines, Heller always has an eye on Asian markets. She posts videos on Italian wine to her 38,000 Instagram followers, a project that began as a partnership with the Italian Wine Agency to cater to the Chinese market. Wine and food pairing is key to the messaging, but it’s a concept Heller has struggled with in the past. “I had a resistance to saying that specific dishes will be amazing with a particular wine in an Asian context, simply because that’s not the way that people eat. People don’t eat one dish at a time,” she explains. Instead, she focuses on “trying to find families of flavours that will work well”.
Marsala, Sicily’s fortified wine, for example, goes well with spicy Sichuan cuisine. “You have people who are very comfortable with high levels of spice – that explosive, aggressive sensation in the mouth – and Marsala works quite well.”
Cuisines from various regions of Asia have much to offer by way of pairing, Heller argues. “There’s really interesting stuff to be done with different elements and sauces,” she says. “I think it could be the work of a lifetime.”
Italian wines
Heller champions Italian wines as an educator, a journalist, and via social media, and was recently honoured with the Order of the Star by the president of the Italian Republic at a ceremony in Hong Kong.
Heller, this year’s recipient of the Asia Personality Award, joins a league of industry heavyweights in Asia’s wine market who have won the award, including Judy Chan, Grace Vineyards’ CEO, Vincent Cheung, grand master of the Commanderie de Bordeaux in Asia, Yuko and Shin Kibayashi, the creators of the hugely popular manga series Drops of God, Peter Kwok, founder of Vignobles K Group and Greg De’Eb, principal of Crown Wine Cellars Limited.
The Asia Personality Award 2024 is sponsored by Riedel.
Related news
Hallgarten expands into global travel retail
Paragon Wine Estates expands fine wine business in Asia
Pop the cork on Prosecco glory: enter the Prosecco Masters 2025