Hong Kong has long been a red Bordeaux town. Restaurant lists and catalogues from recent auctions have been dominated by wines from the region, home to famous labels such as Chateau Lafite Rothschild and Chateau Petrus.

But interest is finally broadening beyond Bordeaux, albeit slowly, and no other kind of wine is catching on faster than the softer, more mellow red wines of Burgundy. (Though top wines from Italy and Napa Valley are also making progress.)

Wine merchant Berry Bros. & Rudd said it expects the highest growth in wine sales in Asia to come from Burgundy wines over the next three years.

Burgundy-based master of wine Jasper Morris -- himself a regular visitor to Hong Kong -- said wines from the region are a more versatile match for food than Bordeaux.

'Burgundy mirrors fine Chinese tea in its perfumed aroma, subtlety and complexity of flavors and exceptional persistence, whereas more structured and powerful Bordeaux invokes Indian tea,' he said.

Mr. Morris last month traveled to Shanghai for the first time to launch his new book 'Inside Burgundy,' a look at the region's vineyards.

'Burgundy is unfortunately far more difficult to understand than Bordeaux, though that is in itself an attraction to some people,' said Mr. Morris. 'The starting point is probably to pick out some [wine from] favorite villages and then if price permits some Grand Crus -- plus of course a checklist of favorite producers.'

Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Henri Jayer, Leroy, Armand Rousseau and Comte Georges de Vogue are the classic Burgundy producers. Grivot, Dujac and various others are not far behind, Mr. Morris says.

A bottle of Domaine Jean Grivot's lowest-priced red is 280 Hong Kong dollars (US$36) on Berry's website, while the top producers tend to start in the thousands of Hong Kong dollars and go upwards from there.

Sotheby's wine expert Robert Sleigh said that though it takes collectors time to learn about the wines of Burgundy -- there are thousands of small producers making subtly varied versions -- once they do, they tend to stick with it.

Some of the top lots sold at a Sotheby's Hong Kong wine auction earlier this month were from Domaine de la Romanee-Conti -- a case of the 2005 sold for a whopping HK$1,815,000.

'People get more passionate about Burgundy than anything else,' said Mr. Sleigh. 'Relative to the rest of the market, Burgundy is undervalued.'

Prices for top Burgundies are not low, but an agreement last week between the Hong Kong government and Burgundy to help promote and sell wines here means interest (and prices) likely will rise.

Sommelier Gon Leung at the restaurant Cepage, which holds one of Hong Kong's biggest wine cellars, says many of his customers know Bordeaux names and vintages well, but are now beginning to learn about and order Burgundy.

'They used to be beginners, but now they are intermediate,' said Mr. Leung. 'They know it's trendy and China mainland doesn't really know about it, so it's special.'