Ten Vineyards, Six Wines: Inside Hank’s Quest For Bordeaux’s Hidden Gems

Hank’s, Malaysia’s leading alcohol retailer, has launched Cuvée Nadéline—an exclusive collection of six Bordeaux wines curated after visiting over 10 family-owned French estates to personally select bottles embodying authentic terroir and craftsmanship.

Fernando Fong

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It takes a certain conviction to visit more than 10 French vineyards, taste dozens of wines, and come home with only six bottles.

It’s the ambition of curation—the belief that somewhere between the hundreds of family estates dotting the Bordeaux countryside, there exist a handful of wines worth crossing continents for, wines that tell stories worth retelling to strangers in a city seven thousand miles away.

This is what Kanthan Kolandi Vellu and Sandy Low did.

Kanthan, who directs merchandising at Hank’s, Malaysia’s leading alcohol retailer, and Low, who manages the company’s private label division, spent weeks moving through French wine country, knocking on estate doors, meeting winemakers whose families have been tending the same vines for generations.

They were looking for something specific, though perhaps they couldn’t have articulated it until they found it: wines with what the French call terroir—that untranslatable quality that binds a wine to the soil it came from, the hands that made it, the weather that shaped it.

What they brought back is Cuvée Nadéline, a collection of six Bordeaux wines now available exclusively at Hank’s stores across Malaysia.

The Hank’s team presents the six-wine Cuvée Nadéline collection at The Gardens Mid Valley launch, each bottle representing a different château and a different expression of what Bordeaux can be. (Pix: Fernando Fong)

The Estates

Each bottle comes from a different château, and each château is its own small universe of tradition and obsession.

There’s Château Haut-Macô, where owner Hugues Mallet expressed genuine excitement about his wines reaching Malaysian tables.

The stories of our estates, our people, our practices, and passion—can reach a wider audience and be experienced with every bottle.

Then there’s Domaine de Lilotte, Château Canteloup, Château Melin, Château Clou du Pin, Château Gadet Terrefort, and Château Tour Bel Air—names that sound like characters in a nineteenth-century novel, each representing a different expression of what Bordeaux can be.

Many are family-run operations where the same people who prune the vines in spring are the ones bottling the wine in autumn.

Several hold High Environmental Value Level 3 certifications, a French designation for estates committed to sustainable viticulture, which is to say they farm in ways that won’t exhaust the land their grandchildren will inherit.

The barrel-knocking ceremony at the Cuvée Nadéline launch—symbolic of the weeks spent knocking on château doors across Bordeaux. (Left to right): Hans Ong, Senior Manager of Grocery Procurement & Merchandising (Food); Tan Kee Tatt, Director of Grocery Procurement & Merchandising (Non-food); Joseph Teoh, Deputy Chief Executive Officer; and Low. (Pix: Fernando Fong)

The Wines Themselves

The collection reads like a study in blending philosophy.

Domaine de Lilotte’s offering is 55 percent Merlot, 45 percent Cabernet Sauvignon—a balanced marriage that yields aromas of dried fig and cherry with what the tasting notes call “a fine, woody finish.”

Château Canteloup takes a more adventurous route: 40 percent Cabernet Franc, 35 percent Merlot, 25 percent Malbec, resulting in something described as “fresh” with “juicy notes of jammy cherry and crunchy raspberries,” the kind of wine that makes you wonder if the person writing the notes was having more fun than they should have been.

Château Melin goes heavy on Cabernet Sauvignon—80 percent—cut with 20 percent Cabernet Franc, producing what’s characterized as “vivacious and well-structured” with notes of stone fruits and polished wood.

Château Clou du Pin is almost entirely Merlot, 90 percent, which gives it an intensity that manifests as liquorice and coffee cream with hints of light smoke and sandalwood, the kind of wine that demands you pay attention to it.

Château Gadet Terrefort splits the difference at 70 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 30 percent Merlot, offering blackcurrant and toasted oak with something the notes call “a distinct sandy-mineral finish”—that terroir again, the taste of the specific ground the grapes grew in.

And finally, Château Tour Bel Air presents what might be called the classic Bordeaux blend: 75 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 25 percent Merlot, structured and complex with dark plum, cassis, cedar, and spice.

Media guests flank a Hank’s staff member at the Cuvée Nadéline launch, where the six-wine collection—each bottle selected from family estates across Bordeaux—was presented not as a catalog exercise, but as the result of conviction and weeks spent tasting through French wine country. (Pix: Fernando Fong)

The Price of Curation

The collection is priced between RM105.90 and RM139.90, which positions these wines in the premium-but-approachable category—expensive enough to signal quality, accessible enough to justify curiosity.

Domaine de Lilotte, the 55 percent Merlot blend with dried fig and cherry notes, sits at the entry point: RM105.90.

Château Clou du Pin, the 90 percent Merlot with its liquorice and coffee cream intensity, comes in at RM109.90 while Château Gadet Terrefort, with its sandy-mineral finish, is RM119.90.

The three “Cuvée Nadéline” labeled bottles—Château Tour Bel Air, Château Melin, and Château Gadet Terrefort—range from RM119.90 to RM139.90, with Château Canteloup, the adventurous forty percent Cabernet Franc blend, priced at RM126.90.

For context, this is what you might pay for a few glasses at a Kuala Lumpur wine bar—except here you’re getting the whole bottle at retail price, and you know exactly where it came from and who made it.

Hank’s is offering a free wine glass with any bottle purchase, a four-bottle set at RM399 (down from RM495.60) with a complimentary RM68 aerator, and a “Blind Aroma Challenge” at stores where correctly identifying wine aromas wins you Hank’s merchandise via Gachapon—incentives that range from practical to playfully ambitious.

The “Blind Aroma Challenge” in action at Hank’s The Gardens Mid Valley—a gamified sommelier test where correctly identifying wine aromas earns you a spin at a Gachapon machine for merchandise, which is either charming or slightly desperate, though probably the former. (Pix: Fernando Fong)

The Question of Taste

Wine is unusual because the story behind it matters almost as much as how it tastes.

A blind taste test might not distinguish a Château Gadet Terrefort from a dozen other Bordeaux blends, but knowing that it comes from a family estate practicing sustainable viticulture, that someone visited the vineyard and met the winemakers, that it’s one of only six wines selected from more than 10 estates—all of that changes the experience of drinking it.

Or maybe it doesn’t.

Maybe wine is just wine, and everything else is marketing but if that were entirely true, Kanthan and Low could have simply ordered from a catalog and saved themselves the trip.

Instead, they went to France, which suggests they believe—or at least hope—that the difference between a good wine and a great wine is something you can only discover in person, walking between the vines, tasting from the barrel, listening to winemakers talk about soil composition and harvest timing with the intensity of people discussing something that actually matters.

A guest at the Cuvée Nadéline launch captures the moment—because wine is peculiar in that the story matters almost as much as the thing itself. (Pix: Fernando Fong)

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