(Wines&Vines) - Planning a trip to China, travelers are often told that Hong Kong makes a good jumping-off point for exploring the massive nation with a population of 1.3 billion. The same could be said for wineries looking to break into the Asian market, according to a panel of industry experts based in the city-state. Speaking Thursday at the Hong Kong International Wine & Spirits Fair, professor K.C. Chan, Hong Kong’s secretary for financial services and the treasury, said that those in the wine industry relate strongly to terroir — characteristics of the land. Hong Kong’s terroir, he said, is at once separate and part of China, Asia’s fastest growing market. In 2008, Hong Kong — a special administrative region of the People’s Republic of China — removed what Chan said wineries might consider a weed from a fertile marketplace: The region reduced its wine tax from 40% to zero.