Sean C. O'Shea, a wine specialist from Ireland, came to Beijing for the first time more than ten years ago. Now he runs a western-style restaurant named Zuma at the city's Jing Guang Center. The restaurant contains a red wine bar, a rarity in Beijing.
O'Shea, who is in his 40s, has a diploma from the Hotel Management College of the Hilton Hotel Group and once studied catering and won a prize at the British Hotel and Catering Institute Competition. At the age of 24, he completed his training in the United States and was employed by a US luxury restaurant. Over six years of painstaking efforts, he was promoted from waiter, to foreman, and then to red-wine specialist.
Most customers of the restaurant were social celebrities who preferred high-quality, expensive red wine.
"You must confirm you know and personally taste the kind of wine before you serve your customers a bottle of such wine," a manager once told O'Shea.
O'Shea then worked hard to accumulate knowledge about red wine. Four years later, he acquired the highest-ranked certificate of a red wine specialist.
He attributes his rich knowledge about red wine to a lot of tasting and study, and he thinks his exploration of red wine will never come to an end. Unlike automobiles and clothes, which have only a few renowned brands, red wine has nearly a thousand brands across the world. Every wine drinker has his or her own preference. In addition, different red wine accompanies different foods, their relationship like that between a man and a woman.
In 1993, at the age of 32, O'Shea came to Beijing. He started his red wine business two years later.
As the Chinese awareness of drinks changed, red wine began to win their favor. The Asian financial crisis broke out in 1997, and many red wine makers began to target China's market. The surge of China's red wine market, however, did not take an easy route. A great deal of fake red wine crowded into China from foreign countries, and some merchants filled name-brand wine bottles with inferior wine. Some mixed red wine with carbonic drink, ice or lemon because they had little knowledge about red wine. All of this bothered O'Shea, so he put his own wine business on hold and joined a consultation company. At that time, he said, he had fallen in love with a woman from Beijing and wanted to earn enough money to marry her.
When O'Shea resumed his red wine business, China's red wine market showed a promising prospect and great potential. Therefore, his business became better and better.
Even so, he still thought selling red wine was not a direct and rapid way to spread red wine culture. Then, he hatched the idea to open a Western restaurant because one cannot not separate red wine from Western food.
O'Shea says he has two "sons." One is the two-and-a-half-year-old boy from his Chinese wife. The other is his Zuma restaurant.
The boss will serve customers personally if waiters are not sufficient.
O'Shea and his wife.
O'Shea says his son is the "god" of the family.
(China Pictorial June 18, 2004)
