A leading light within the expat and local community Don Hall generously shows his sensational 4000 sq ft Lake View Gardens home
A leading light within the expat and local community when it comes to fine food and wine, Don Hall generously shares his sensational 4000 sq ft Lake View Gardens home – and a bottle of excellent bubbly – to speak with Suzanne Watkinson for Macau CLOSER to reminisce about his time in Macau and discuss his passion for good wine.
A name synonymous with fine food and wine and munificent entertaining, Don Hall has been in Macau for most of the past 50 years. Posted to Macau in 1962 as part of the British diplomatic service, his career and life in Asia is reminiscent of a character in a Graham Greene novel. He ran a highly successful electronic manufacturing business, and later turned his hand to his true passion, establishing a wine and gourmet import company, Fine Beverages Limited. For the past 30 years he has also been an active member of the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, an international gastronomic society, and five years ago he was invited by the headquarters in Paris to open the Bailliage National de Macau, of which he is President.
Its perhaps not surprising then that in his sensational 4,000 square foot Lake View Gardens home overlooking Nam Wan lake, he has built a separate wing off the kitchen for casual dining, wine tasting
s and to house his sizeable stock of 250 bottles. Two Transtherm wine storage cabinets store the bottles at a range of temperatures depending on their differing needs. Here Don keeps several of his treasures: exquisite wine from France, Italy, South Africa, Australia and Napa Valley California.
“I buy wine to drink, not to collect”, he remarks as he guides us through his beautiful apartment.
Home comforts are important for a man who is out entertaining so often. He explains that being big in stature his first priority when buying the apartment was to open up everything and enlarge the space, removing false ceilings, walls, floors, and windows, so he could start from a blank canvass.
Don’s daughter, Angela of Angela Hall Design in Hong Kong, is a graduate of the Royal Chelsea College of Art and she handled everything; demolition, space planning, design and furnishing. Having previously worked with organisations such as Hirsch Bender on projects like the original Mandarin Café and Grissini in the Grand Hyatt, she threw her talents into producing a skilfully, lovingly designed new home for her dad.
There is a strong Asian-Indonesian and Thai influence that permeates throughout, from the Indonesian teak wood flooring to much of the furnishing and decorative art. The living room furniture i
s designed for maximum comfort, with over-sized sofas and chairs in soft plush fabrics. The focal point – huge sliding glass doors, typhoon-proof and brought in from Germany – lead to a sizeable balcony overlooking breathtaking lake views.
As the apartment takes up one entire floor of the building, the entrance lift lobby is only used by Don and his guests, so it too has been given a make-over and been transformed into an almost spa-like atmosphere.
Kook, from central Thailand, is Don’s partner of five years. She shares Don’s love of good food and is a superb cook herself. The kitchen, with granite tops from Hong Kong and quality German appliances from Siemens, is impressively laid out with vast fridges and cooking range, and is perfect for all the couple’s home entertainment.
With such an impressive abode, it is hard to imagine wanting to walk out the front door. But Don has always been a man of action, and when he is not running his business or travelling the world in his role as president of Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, he takes a keen interest in the work of Macau’s Institute for Tourism Studies, regularly attending student wine appreciation and dining training sessions.
He is a member of the Macau Wine Society, and in charge of the Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne in Macau, which promotes the wines of Champagne, their unique features, their ways of consumption and everything that contributes to their reputation and their image. At least twice a week Don is involved in wine tastings hosted at various hotels and restaurants, where the general public are invited.
Not someone known for sitting still for long, when asked what his goals are for the rest of the year, Don simply says ‘travel!’ This month he will attend Coteaux de Champagne events in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Taipei, in June he will be in France visiting his contacts in Champagne, and in June there will be Chaîne des Rôtisseurs dinners in Kyoto, Osaka and Tokyo.
Photos by Carmo Correia.
