In March 2001, Paulo Pong, then 24 years old, was part of a group tasting the 2000 Bordeaux en primeur at Le Saint-James, a hotel near Bordeaux. At that time, Pong was beginning to establish Altaya Wines, which has since become one of Hong Kong’s leading wine companies. Pong, a member of a family that owns Hong Kong’s sole steel plant founded by his grandfather in 1958, developed a deep personal interest and expertise in wine from an early age. His hands-on experience includes working the grape harvest for the Moueix family, owners of Petrus, and laboring in the cellars of Château Cheval Blanc.
Pong’s passion for wine grew alongside a prestigious educational background. After graduating high school, he celebrated with a trip to Napa Valley, despite being under the legal drinking age in the United States. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he reportedly focused more on wine literature than on his official course material in material science and engineering. Early work experience included roles at Hyatt hotels in Hong Kong and London’s Pont de la Tour, reflecting a formative period deciding between a career in restaurants or wine distribution.
By 2001, Pong had begun importing Bordeaux wines commercially, leveraging family support and connections. Around 2003, he shifted focus to representing boutique, family-owned wineries from prestigious regions such as Champagne, Burgundy, and Napa Valley. During this period, Burgundy’s top producers like Rousseau, Roumier, and Dujac were relatively unknown to the growing market of Chinese collectors, which allowed Altaya to secure their representations with relative ease. Pong highlights that his Hong Kong base opened doors for these partnerships since many European producers sought to establish a presence in Asia.
A critical development came in February 2008, when Hong Kong eliminated wine duties, coinciding with rising wine enthusiasm among affluent mainland Chinese buyers. China maintains high import duties on wine—often above 40 percent—prompting a cross-border trade where individuals frequently transported limited quantities from Hong Kong into China. Despite recent Chinese government controls imposing restrictions on frequency and spending limits for imported alcohol, between 2008 and 2012, Pong notes an exponential growth in wine sales facilitated by Hong Kong’s duty-free status and increasing interest in imported wine.
In 2012, Pong married Sonia Cheng, CEO of the Rosewood hotel group and daughter of Hong Kong real estate magnate Henry Cheng. The couple have five children. Today, Altaya Wines continues to operate prominently in Asia’s fine wine market, with Pong’s early vision of connecting boutique European wineries to Asian consumers largely realized amid a dynamic and evolving industry environment.