Hinde crafted ‘regionally appropriate’ wines from fruit sourced in sites in eastern Napa Valley, and the ’09 Yao Cabernet offers aromatic, lifted red and black fruit, star anise and varietal aromas with well-knit oak lending weight to dark pomegranate and graphite flavors. The Yao Reserve has an amplified structure, savory mocha fruit  with toasted black tea notes and silky tannins.

By Deborah Parker Wong

The wine is made with great care, using rigorous hand sorting, natural yeasts and the very best techniques possible to craft this beautiful example of Napa Cab. An elegant prize, it exhibits a class and breed uncommon for a first-try wine. Slightly austere, which presages solid aging potential, nevertheless, it is supple and concentrated with hints of blackberries and violets with a lengthy finish. This wine has an extra dimension of gorgeous fruit and texture in the mid palate which raises it to the level of many of the top and priciest Cabs made in California. The regular Cab is available at Vic and Anthony’s Steakhouse for $300. It is also available for $170 at yaofamilywines.com.”

Houston Lifestyles & Homes is written for Houston residents interested in the homes and lifestyles of fellow residents. Focuses on interior and exterior design, gardening, food and wine, fashion, health and fitness and automobiles. Includes new product updates and profiles of local personalities.

By: Denman Moody, Houston Lifestyle & Homes

In a week in which Gov. Jerry Brown has demonstrated a significant degree of diplomatic acuity, it will likely not go down as an international incident.

On the other hand, the retired Chinese basketball player Yao Ming is a national icon, so it might have helped to know how injury prone Ming was before asking if he’d ever been hurt.

“Did you ever get injured?” Brown asked the former Houston Rockets standout before a dinner cruise on the Huangpu River on Saturday.

In fact, Ming said, injury was the reason he retired.

And no, it was not his knees, Ming said when Brown suggested basketball can be hard on them, but his ankle.

Ming, who owns a Napa Valley winery, met with Brown and posed for photographs before the governor and other members of his week-long trade mission to China left the dock.

Following the Brown-Ming injury exchange, Brown’s wife, Anne Gust Brown, stepped in, a compliment coming.

“What do you do now to keep in shape?” she said.

When Ming said he isn’t in shape, she replied, “You look in shape to me.”

“OK,” Ming said. “Thank you.”

Former pro basketball player Yao Ming has not been idle since retiring from the Houston Rockets in July 2011. In addition to enrolling at the Shanghai Jaio Tong University and working on behalf of elephant conservation, the thirty-year old has begun producing a pair of premium Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons.

Yao Ming and Tom Hinde, President and Director of Winemaking of Yao FamilyWines, presented the portfolio at the historic Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles recently. The grapes are sourced from multiple Napa sub-appellations and include small amounts of Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

An excellent example of its type, the $170 Yao Ming 2009 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is well-balanced and fruity with silky tannins. We give it a rating of 16/20. Just a few thousand cases of it were produced, of which more than half will be sold in Yao’s native China where it was initially released. The wine can be purchased directly from the winery by those on the exclusive allocation list as well as at select fine retailers and restaurants in cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Houston.

Only a few hundred cases of the $625 Yao Ming Family Reserve 2009 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon were produced. Boasting more intense and concentrated flavors than its counterpart, the wine earned a rating of 16.5/20 and a place on our Top Rated Cabernet Sauvignons. Yao hopes to expand the portfolio in the future.

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For more celebrity CPPCC members, CCTV News correspondent Fei Ye sat down with former basketball player Yao Ming, a first time CPPCC member discussing Chinese politics and public diplomacy.

FEI YE: Yao Ming thank you for your time. You were a professional basketball player, a businessman, and a philanthropist and now a CPPCC member. What does this title mean to you? And what is the responsibility for this role?

YAO MING: The CPPCC can provide a platform for the ruling party to hear the different voices of the people and to solve their problems. Our responsibility is that we have to voice the truth. We should have our own opinions. It is important to have an independent thinking toward everything. Communicating with others who work in the same field or different fields is also important. With this, we can see things in an objective way. Working this way can provide us with different kinds of answers.

FEI YE: This is your first year participating in China’s politics, what are your expectations?

YAO MING: I’m hoping I can learn the rules here, every organization or conference has their existing rules; like how to communicate with each other effectively or how to utilize your resources. I would like to adapt to the environment first, understanding every bit of it and then make my contributions to the society.

FEI YE: As a Vice Chairman of the Shanghai Public Diplomacy Association, how are you planning to push the work in this area?

YAO MING: The way public diplomacy works, is just like visiting your neighbors, your relatives or your friends. The atmosphere is very relaxed, but through this process you get to know each other’s families, personalities and thoughts in a very natural and fluid way. If a problem arises in the future, this base that you have established with each other will help you in better communicating and understanding the situation and that’s public diplomacy.

FEI YE: CPPCC is the country’s top Advisory body that has people from different professions and famous people. How does fame play into this role?

YAO MING: In America, participations and discussions of politics are very common. And there are professional politicians. However in China, politics has been very closed for a long time, but now slowly it’s becoming more open. At this stage, there are a lot of celebrities involved in politics…because the participation of celebrities has attracted people who were not interested in politics before, increasing public interest. When the public pays more attention to politics, it helps in maturing our political system. Of course I agree with that not every celebrity is a good politician. But you can’t deny all of their contributions. We are still growing. If celebrities don’t get involved, it might be the same closed political system as in the past, which I’m sure nobody would like to see.

FEI YE: How do you see yourself playing a role in the future of China’s policy and current issues?

YAO MING: I would like to observe more things and visit more places around the country. To get to know and learn about other industries that I’m not familiar with and see if there’s anything can be changed or improved in those areas.

The former Houston Rockets center, in town in advance of this weekend’s All-Star festivities, has become increasingly active in animal-rights causes since he retired from basketball because of repeated injuries in July 2011.

Late in his playing career, Yao became a vocal — and the most famous — critic of shark-fin soup, a centuries-old delicacy in China. He began actively campaigning in 2006 against “finning” by fishermen — carving off the shark’s valuable fins and dumping their bodies back in the ocean, sometimes while the shark is still alive.

Before he walked around the zoo with about two dozen children, Yao filmed a public service announcement promoting his shark-fin cause with former Rockets center Dikembe Mutombo and current Houston point guard Jeremy Lin.

Yao has now started campaigning against elephant and rhino poaching in Africa and Asia. He’ll star in a documentary on the subject, based on his visit to Kenya last summer, that is scheduled to be released in China toward the end of 2013.

“It’s not as simple as just ‘protect this planet, protect those animals,’” Yao said. “In the end, it’s ‘protect ourselves.’ We know the cycle we have on this planet — it’s one species down and there’s another one after that, and after that and after that. At the end of the day, we’re on that cycle as well.”

An eight-time All-Star, Yao became a global icon when he played, leading the expansion of the NBA’s appeal through Asia. His worldwide popularity has proven to be a highly effective platform for his animal-conservation efforts, as well, said Peter Knights, the executive director of the San Francisco-based conservation group WildAid.

“He is not only the biggest star in China, he’s also the most respected star,” Knights said. “He’s now the face of conservation and he’s literally changing a generation in China.”

Yao is gratified by the progress he’s seen.

Last summer, the Chinese government announced it would remove shark-fin soup from the menus of government banquets over the next three years and high-end restaurants have started replacing shark-fin soup with a substitute made with gelatin, starch and seaweed. Last month, the South China Morning Post reported that census data from Hong Kong shows that imports of shark fins dropped from 10,292 tons in 2011 to 3,087 tons in 2012.

“The numbers show the payback for the effort that everybody has put in,” Yao said. “It showed that it was very effective.”

Yao talked to children as he petted one of the zoo’s southern white rhinos. Poachers in Africa and Asia chop off the rhino’s horns and sell them. The horns are ground into powder and then sold for various medicinal purposes, including as a hangover cure. The ivory elephant tusks, Knights said, are cut off in a similar manner, sold and used mostly for ornamental uses.

Yao is hoping to increase awareness for his causes in the United States and wants to start by making an impression on the younger generation.

“You have little pets in your house — dogs, cats, all kinds,” Yao said. “Just imagine your relationship with your pets. That’s the same thing, the same kind of thing, that the African people have with those big animals. They’re living in the same country, just like in the same house.

“We want to show them examples, as a first stage, how animals look and how beautiful they are,” he said. “Our hope in the future that they’ll not only see the animals in the zoo, but hopefully in the wild.”

Yao said his involvement with animal conservation is separate from his foundation, which he launched in 2008 to help rebuild schools in the wake of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan. Yao said the foundation last year set up a youth basketball league for the affected schools.

One mainland private equity firm, Hina Capital Partners, which manages both yuan and dollar-denominated private equity vehicles, is setting up a $100 million wine-related fund to invest in vineyards across the U.S.

The formation of the new fund was largely in response to the firm’s high net-worth investors seeking to diversify their portfolios, said Managing Director Hanson Li. Wealthy Chinese citizens, who have become active buyers of property both at home and abroad are now looking to invest their dollars in different assets, especially as domestic house prices rise and the government aims to curb multiple purchases.

China’s love affair with the grape has been burgeoning, even with Shanghai native and former Houston Rocket-player Yao Ming launching his own Californian winery that will specifically cater to the mainland market’s taste, called Yao Family Wines.

By: Sonja Cheung