Why has wine consumption become popular in Hong Kong? Introducing a new sociocultural paradigm of traditional, aspiring and creative drinkers

Although Hong Kong has become one of the most valuable wine trading hubs in the world since the withdrawal of the wine duty in February 2008, relatively little is known about how and why local consumers drink wine. Drawing on Bourdieu's notions of "connoisseur," "pedant," and "proletarian," this article introduces a paradigm of three drinking practices in Hong Kong: established, aspiring and creative. It further introduces the concept of "third indigenization" – the combining of products from two or more places of origin, and subsequently creating a new product in a third place. Methodologically, the analysis of marketing materials, ethnographies, interviews and focus groups conducted in Hong Kong provides a basis for exploring the sociocultural and geographical meanings of wine. This article discusses how wine consumption is popular because it conveys the idea of being globalized, allows the display of wealth, and expresses the idea of having cultural capital. Significantly, this article challenges popular Anglo-Eurocentric understandings of consumption practices and provides a broader and more flexible approach to cultural analysis: it makes conceptual and methodological and contributions to consumer research and to the sociology and geography of wine.