Financial Secretary Paul Chan

I think the Wine & Dine Festival found its way to excellence a good while back. And year after year, it just keeps getting better.

This 10th anniversary festival, ladies and gentlemen, is the most ambitious to date. Certainly the largest, expanding past the Central waterfront. More than 30 countries and regions are participating, a big jump over last year's 21 countries and regions. Booth totals are also expanding - to 450, up from 400 last year. They include, I should add, nearly 320 wine booths in six thematic zones.

In celebration of the festival's anniversary, Wine & Dine 10th Edition specials are on offer, together with a series called 2009 Vintage, which includes selections from Robert Parker's 100-Point red wines. That sounds almost perfect.

Speaking of which, you'll want to pick up the Perfect 10 Passport, a winning combination of wine and food pairings to share with family and friends, new and old.

Speaking of food, two new zones have been introduced - International Street Eats and Coffee Fiesta, the latter filled with lots of sweet treats.

I'd say we deserve them. With the help of this annual autumn celebration, Hong Kong has emerged as Asia's wine hub and a global centre for wine trading and auctions. In the first half of this year, we imported more than $6 billion-worth of wine from all over the world. That, ladies and gentlemen, reflects year-on-year growth of 9%.

Our top three wine importers in 2017 were France, Australia and the UK.

In June we signed an MoU with Bordeaux, our long-time partners in wine-and-food tourism promotion.

Another MoU - this one expanding co-operation in wine-related education and manpower training between Bordeaux and Hong Kong - is in the pipeline, or perhaps it should be a "wine line".

The agreements will boost our role as the ambassador for the best wines from Bordeaux and other resplendent wine-making regions.

Financial Secretary Paul Chan gave these remarks at the 2018 Hong Kong Wine & Dine Festival opening ceremony on October 25.