Hil Ying Tse: A day in the life of a whisky distributor
Hil Ying Tse, managing director of Hong Kong distributor Whiskies & More, talks to Millie Milliken about bringing new brands into the country, rocking up to bars with bottles and hiking.
“I am quite an early bird so I wake up at 7-7.30am. I spend my morning responding to emails – I get a lot of emails overnight from overseas – so I check those and have breakfast.
“The best part of my job is tasting the samples from suppliers who I want to import. I do that in the morning at about 10.30am so I have my palate quite clean. I try and blindly taste them, write a couple of notes and determine whether it is going to be interesting for the Hong Kong people. I grew up in Holland so even though I might like it I’m always trying to judge what would be popular or not. I find a lot of people here are still newbies and they like to drink more intense flavours that are easy to recognise, like sherry or wine casks, or peated whiskies.
“I also have to think if the price value is correct and make a decision very quickly around how many bottles to import or not – I don’t linger. Around lunchtime I go to the gym to clear my mind and just mentally switch off for an hour.
“Then I head over to the office. It’s only me usually (although I do have two part-timers helping out and they sometimes come to office) so I’m very flexible in that sense. On a daily basis I do strategy for the company, run the online shops, have meetings with the trade, conference calls with suppliers… every day is a bit different.
“I mainly look after whiskies – I guess it’s about 85% of the business – but I do have a cognac brand as well as some rums, tequilas and a couple of gins. I distribute things like Black Tot Rum which is new in Hong Kong but some of the local bartenders used to work in London so know the brand from there. A lot of the smaller brands aren’t available in Hong Kong so I’m really happy when I get these brands.
“A lot of my customers are bars – closest to my office is COA which takes my tequila so I’m there quite often, and for other trade I try and visit them all by grouping them geographically.
“I do tastings for my company around once a month and then work with customers who want to do their own tastings and I’m just the speaker. Most of the people I do tastings for are from hotels or bars, so they have their own customers and want to do a collaboration with one of my brands, or do a theme, so it’s a bit more interesting for customers. For example, instead of focusing on one brand’s 10-, 12- or 15-year-old, I’ll do different cask finishes.
“There are also two whisky festivals in Hong Kong so we have a lot of brand ambassadors coming over. I hop over to different whisky festivals around the world too, a couple of times to Japan and at least once to the UK and Paris. If I have time while I’m over I go on a trip to Scotland as well.
“The really fun part for me is around 5pm or 6pm when I do some bar hopping. I go around with a couple of whiskies. If I know the team well I just go in with the bottle and sit at the bar and let the bartenders try different cocktails and taste them. If they’re not too busy they are happy to play around and be creative. Otherwise I give them a heads up that I’m coming and go along and explain the whiskies.
“On average I’m done at 7pm, but when you’re sitting at a bar it doesn’t feel like working for me. When I first set up the business in 2016 I did work much longer hours but now I really consciously tell myself that 7pm is the latest and no work on Saturday or Sunday – in my spare time I go hiking a lot.
“After work I sometimes go out for dinner with friends, or sometimes just chill at home. If I go out with friends I tend not to go to my customers so I can split my two worlds – for me mentally it works better.”
