With only a few days between them and so many of the same faces, the London Wine Trade Fair and Vinexpo Asia Pacific occasionally felt like consecutive episodes of the same television series. But, you only had to look or listen for a moment to tell the difference between these two events. One of them was a serious commercial gathering, packed with people eager to taste and buy top class wine, while the other was… the London Wine Trade Fair.

In the British capital, the talk was still of the recent hefty increase in duty rates that was threatening retailers' ability to offer three bottles of wine for £10 and seemed set to halt the growth in UK wine consumption. In Hong Kong, the chatter was about the total removal of excise duty and import licences, and the revelation by the Chief Secretary Henry Tang at the opening ceremony that, even before the abolition of duty, while the volume of wine imports into Hong Kong had risen by 120% percent, value had gone up by 200% since 2007.

At least one British visitor sniffed disdainfully at the US$100,000 Acker Merrill had spent on hospitality before its first-ever Asian auction and the red and gold hardback catalogue. But it was the New York firm that laughed all the way to the bank - where they deposited the $8.2m raised by the sale; 10% over estimate and, conveniently, a figure that includes the two luckiest numbers in Chinese culture. Just as happy, presumably, were the great and good of Bordeaux whose Union des Grands Crus’ tasting of 2005s proved so popular that stocks of many of the wines ran out a full three hours before closing, allowing them to head off early for lunch.

Many of those chateau owners remembered Vinexpo 1998. Hong Kong's Peregrine Investment Bank had just collapsed, creating a panic in the local stock market, the Hong Kong Dollar had to be propped up against attacks from speculators, and Japan was officially declared to be in a recession. Unsurprisingly, attendance that year was sparse and exhibitors spent much of their time complaining to each other that most of the people who did attend were local – very local – expatriates. That gweilo focus was just as evident at the dinner to launch the first Watsons Wine Cellars shop, where I only recall seeing one Chinese face.

Ten years on, Vinexpo 2008 was packed, with over 8,000 professional visitors, of whom over a quarter came from the mainland; gweilos were firmly in the minority. Watsons Wine Cellars now has a dozen outlets where customers – mostly Chinese – can choose from a brilliant range of 2,000 wines. Today, thanks to these stores a wine lover in even the more obscure parts of Hong Kong has far easier access to good bottles than his counterpart in London. But much the same can be said of Seoul, Osaka and Taipei and there are plenty of great wines to be found in Guangzhou, Hanoi and Phnom Penh.

As Robert Parker wrote in his blog after two weeks in the region, which he described as the most exciting trip of his lifetime: “Asia Rules....and then some”.