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Gérard Basset

Gérard Basset is arguably Europe’s greatest sommelier.

There are few who have earned the sobriquet “the world’s greatest wine taster.” The late Harry Waugh, one of England’s most gifted wine merchants, who was so popular in the U.S. that he had a dining room in a restaurant in Tampa, Fla., named after him, was one. Robert Parker, the Baltimore-based wine critic who invented the 100-point tasting scale, is probably another. Michel Bettane, the French wine critic who wrote for La Revue de vin de France for more than 20 years, could be thought of in this bracket.

But when it comes to qualifications, one man has sniffed and slurped his way through more wine examinations than perhaps any other. That man is Gérard Basset, 54 years old, who boasts not just a Master of Wine qualification, but also a Master Sommelier, and a Wine M.B.A. from the Bordeaux École de Management, for which he wrote a thesis on the psychology of the wine list. If that wasn’t enough, in 2010 he was named world champion by the Association de la Sommellerie Internationale (ASI) in Santiago, Chile. If anyone can claim to be the world’s greatest sommelier, it is probably him.

Not bad for a man who left school at 16 with no formal qualifications, began his career washing dishes at a hotel on the Isle of Man and, in 1977, when he first came to Britain from his home in France, knew absolutely nothing about wine. So last summer, when it was announced he was to be awarded an Order of the British Empire in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, the fairy tale was complete.

“It was such a beautiful day,” he says, in an accent that retains much of the character of his first language. “If I go back to my childhood, I was very anti-royal. We thought these English people were crazy—we, after all, killed our kings. But when you live in England, you understand more the importance of the monarchy. It took me a while, but slowly I became quite fond of the queen.”

In the end it wasn’t the queen who bestowed the medal (for services to hospitality) but the Princess Royal, Princess Anne, who charmed him with her French while the band at Windsor Castle included two Edith Piaf scores in their playlist. “It was a nice touch,” he says. “The whole day was very special.”

There is something intrinsically intimidating about being in the company of a sommelier. No matter how much you know about wine, when you walk into the hushed theater of fine dining and are handed a leather-bound wine list with its countless bins and vintages, the heart always skips a little faster. Not so in the company of Mr. Basset. Modest, almost to the point where he is deferring to your wine knowledge, he admits to being a generalist who can never “know it all.”

“If you say ‘I know everything’ then you never learn,” he says. “You learn from everyone, those who are much more qualified and those who are not.

“I very much believe you have to carry on learning. For all the courses I have done, yes, they have been beneficial, but I have done them because they are very interesting, fascinating.”

He believes wine lovers are living in part through a golden age, as across the board quality has never been higher. He cites the quality of wines in France and Italy, which have come back with a new, lighter style. But he also laments the fact that most of us can no longer afford the very top wines from France.

“If you were comfortable a few years ago,” he says, “and you had a good job and were earning a good living, not mega-rich; you could afford Château Lafite or Latour. But now, who can afford to spend £600 on a bottle of wine to drink at home?”

He began drinking wine at home as a boy growing up in France. Back then, he used to mix it with water—two parts wine, eight parts water, a drink he still enjoys to this day. It was football that brought him to England, when his hometown club, AS Saint-Étienne, then one of the top clubs in Europe, came to play Liverpool in what would now be the Champions League quarterfinal. Liverpool won 3-1 in what has gone down as one of the most historic matches in the club’s history. It must have left an impression on the young Gérard, as he returned a few years later, eventually settling in the south of England, where he worked as a sommelier in Hampshire. In 1994 he co-founded the Hotel du Vin chain in Winchester, selling it 10 years later to MWB Group Holdings for £66.4 million. Not ready for retirement, in 2007 he opened TerraVina—a boutique hotel with a Napa-inspired restaurant—in the New Forest with his wife Nina.

This is where we meet, at first over a glass of water, but later a glass of Côte-Rôtie, a dense, damson-flavored wine made on the hills of the northern Rhône, not far from where he grew up in Firminy. It is a wine that hasn’t succumbed to the sometimes polished, overripe, high-in-alcohol style found in increasing numbers in his favored Napa.

“We are moving to a point where the American domination of wine through publications such as the Wine Spectator and the influence of Robert Parker is reaching a plateau,” he says. “People are a bit fed up with all of these big wines. I like some of them but when you taste them and they are 15.5%-16% alcohol, it is too much.”

He points out that the natural-wine movement—wines made from organic grapes by artisans with very little intervention in the winemaking—in many ways is a reaction to the sometimes forced, viticulturally exceptional wine styles seen on the market today.

From a winemaking perspective, the wines have never been better but, he says, like football, you can’t have a team full of 11 exceptional players. In the final blend you sometimes need grapes with too much acidity and tannin, in other words, grapes that might be left on the sorting room floor today.

“In old Bordeaux vintages such as Latour ’61 or ’69, they didn’t have sorting tables. I think we have gone toward a style that is too polished and that is why we get so many jammy wines. There’s room for everything but when it is too one-sided, then it is wrong. I think the natural wine movement has brought an element of almost rebellion.”

But he’s not inclined to say more, as, far from being a wine bore, he doesn’t wear his knowledge as a badge of honor or pretend wine tasting is an exact science. “It’s not,” he argues. “It’s highly subjective.

“Some days you don’t taste well,” he says. “If you feel tired, or if it is later in the afternoon.” He smiles. Even the best are fallible.

Write to Will Lyons at william.lyons@wsj.com

By SARAH MORGAN

Mutual-fund managers who actively trade—and pile up fees in the process—have long been punching bags for investors. But suddenly they look like heavyweight champs.

After being trounced by the stock market for years, so-called active managers are on a hot streak. In January, 70% of large-cap stock pickers outperformed the S&P 500-stock index, according to data from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Not even a quarter of them could make such boasts for all of 2011.

Yet even the recent winners are reluctant to declare a return to a stock picker’s market. “Knock wood, six weeks isn’t a trend, but it has been a better environment,” says Bill McVail, manager of the Turner Small Cap Growth fund. His $271 million actively managed fund gained more than 7% in January, beating the S&P 500′s 4.5%.

Others in the field say it is the market that has changed, not the managers. “Some might say we have a hot hand this year, but in fact our hands have largely been idle,” says Whitney Tilson, co-manager of the $16 million Tilson Focus fund, which gained 14.32% in January.

The business of picking stocks is fraught with risk and long positive streaks are rare. The fees don’t make it any easier to beat the competition, given that the average active fund charges 1.29% in fees while the average index fund charges 0.59%, according to Morningstar.

Between 2000 and 2009, on average less than half of active funds beat the broader market each year once fees are taken into account, and over five-year periods, most active funds in every category lag their benchmarks, according to data from Standard & Poor’s.

That performance is one reason investors have been flocking to low-cost index funds and exchange-traded funds. Consider that only 41 ETFs—out more a total of more than 1,400—are actively managed, according to fund tracker Morningstar Inc.

But some fund managers and analysts say this year’s stable market plays into the hands of stock-pickers. After a year of intense volatility, with stocks moving largely in lock-step based on big-picture economic fears, stocks have been less correlated in 2012.

This is considered beneficial to active management, which focuses on company fundamentals more than momentum and broad market sentiment. “The world got a bit safer, and all of a sudden the earnings growth and power of a company is starting to matter more,” says Larry Rakers, manager of the $8 billion Fidelity Dividend Growth fund.

If active managers continue to outperform—making those higher fees a fair price to pay—many financial advisers will be in awkward positions after steering their clients into other options. But most are urging caution, suspecting that the strong performance is unlikely to last. “I don’t think last year was an anomaly,” says Kevin Mahn, the chief investment officer at advisory firm Hennion & Walsh. “That’s becoming more the norm.”

Write to Sarah Morgan at Sarah.Morgan@dowjones.com

By EMILY VEACH

Starbucks Corp. posted faster revenue growth in Asia than anywhere else in the latest quarter. Even though the region only made up about 5% of global sales in the period ended Jan. 1, the Seattle, Wash.-based coffee company just announced a partnership in India, a difficult market for foreign businesses.

“We think in the long term it’s going to be another core engine for the enterprise, given India’s potential and growth. It’s like China,” said Jinlong Wang, president Asia Pacific, who is involved with the company’s India expansion and oversees 10 other markets: Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Mr. Wang first joined Starbucks in 1992 and worked in international business development as well as the law and corporate affairs department until 2000. He then held executive roles in two other companies before returning as Greater China president in 2005. His career also includes teaching and a stint as a government official at the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade in Beijing, before he left to study law at Columbia University.

Philipp Engelhorn

“The most important part of my job is to build the platform for people to accept, to have to align their personal dream with the company mission.’ Jinlong Wang, Starbucks president Asia Pacific.

China, where coffee shops have become a fixture on city street corners, is one of the company’s great success stories. Yet Starbucks suffered from its own success last week when Chinese consumers reacted angrily to news of rising drink prices at Starbucks.

Mr. Wang spoke with Emily Veach in Hong Kong about the challenges of winning brand loyalty in Asia’s varied markets as well as how he retains quality staff, no small task in the retail business.

WSJ: How do you keep good people?

Mr. Wang: We treat our partners with respect, creating an environment for them to excel. To really give the best of themselves, give the best to each other.

WSJ: Do you have management programs in place to groom rising leaders?

Mr. Wang: We want to promote our own people, to give them opportunities. We have store managers who stay on 10 to 15 years, which is very difficult, particularly in the retail business. But they love what they do. They want to see their people grow.

I’m working with two people in the mentoring program, a manager and an operational director. Mentoring is not how to teach, it’s now how to shape, it’s really how to facilitate and allow people to have someone they can talk to, someone they can rely on. You have to have their best interests in mind but nothing else.

WSJ: Where do you see the most potential in this region?

Mr. Wang: Korea. Our partner has done a tremendous job building the brand.

Otherwise, growth is a lot higher in emerging markets. China is growing at about 8% to 9%, the rest of the region maybe 4% to 6%. The coffee industry is double-digits. You’re talking 10%, 20%, 25%, in certain places even 30% growth in this segment. There’s tremendous potential.

WSJ: What do you make of the growth trajectory of China’s middle class?

Mr. Wang: Our brand really resonates with the young people there. Among our core customers in China the average age is much younger than in the U.S.—10-15 years younger. As we continue to grow there, Chinese don’t want to be Westernized. They want to be modernized.

Starbucks will play a leading role in elevating the whole coffee industry, environmental responsibility and enhancing coffee farmers’ lives. We set up a coffee farmer support center, imported some of the best coffee seeds and set up demo farms. We’ve never done it before. Asian Pacific coffee provides a very unique taste and profile. One of best selling coffees is Sumatra, from Indonesia.

WSJ: What are the biggest challenges the markets you oversee?

Mr. Wang: For Starbucks, it’s never been about what we sell. It’s really about what we stand for.…We also have to see how to strike a delicate balance: How to balance the profitability and the social conscience. As we grow we have to keep doing that and not lose the sight for growth and making money. That’s one piece.

The other piece is the people. We are going to hire tens of thousands of people. How do we continually attract and retain the people who have the same passion to serve?

WSJ: You have many competitors spread over a huge region. How do you cope?

Mr. Wang: Starbucks welcomes all the competition. They bring a lot to customers. They keep everyone on alert and see how to continue to stand out. We’ve already established ourselves as a market leader.

I’m also a lawyer; I break the company into three categories: rule makers, rule followers, and rule breakers. Starbucks operates as both a rule maker and a rule breaker.

Rule breakers work for the sake of innovation, new way of serving the market, new way of engaging customers. The other thing is, more importantly, a good company will satisfy consumer needs. A great company helps to lead and create. I think that’s where we stand above the competitors in the industry.

We do (pay attention to competitors). We have a lot of copiers, or rule followers. I always treat it as a compliment. We also want to learn. Each company finds its own place and brings something unique to the market.

Overall I think we can elevate the industry, creating more jobs, creating more opportunities. One of the things I can see from the local competitors, we don’t have a global or even regional competitor.

In every market they have the advantage of understanding the local culture. Sometimes they’re nimble and fast as well.

WSJ: What lessons have you learned from those local companies?

Mr. Wang: We look for ways they connect with customers and how we can learn.

I think our competitors certainly pay a lot more closer attention to what Starbucks is doing and try to copy it. Whatever you call that, they have their place in the market.

The biggest competition is about the people, the talent. Our biggest competitor is ourselves. In our business we don’t need rocket science, you need a passionate community partner, you need the people who take pride and pleasure and happiness in serving other people and making a difference.

WSJ: You’ve had an interesting career path. Why did you choose to leave the civil service in China, which is seen as a very stable career?

Mr. Wang: I always want to learn. I had opportunities to work in other international organizations, then this opportunity to study (law) and learn more.

My major was economics and trade in China, it had nothing to do with law. I always want to learn. It’s the thing that keeps the fire under my belt every day, to learn something new.

But going to law school was a whole different story. They waived all the examinations, but I didn’t understand a word in class when I got there. When you’re young, you can do anything you want.

WSJ: Do you find there is a lot of environmental education involved with farmers in Asia?

Mr. Wang: Huge. Our goal is sustainable growth, through our cafe practice, farmer equity and environmental awareness, economic accountability and better bean count. We help them increase the yield by almost 20%. We also reduce chemical use.

WSJ: People in Asia are more aware of what’s going into their food and water. How does that affect the way you educate these farmers?

Mr. Wang: It varies, but people are more and more conscious about that and becoming more environmentally friendly. Particularly for Asia, more than half the population is here while the resources are limited. We all have the same goal—how to be sustainable and promote growth.

We want to lead awareness and work with communities for the long term. That’s where you can build a sustainable business. That’s where you can really make a big difference. That’s where Starbucks says, “how do we balance the profitability and social conscience?”

Write to Emily Veach at Emily.Veach@wsj.com

By RUTH MANTELL

Your workload has increased, so have your boss’s expectations. But scaling back could mean losing a job.

Talk about stress.

Paul Baard, an organizational and motivational psychologist at Fordham University’s graduate business school in New York, knows just how stressful a work environment can get. He has consulted with athletes in the high-stakes, high-pressure world of professional sports.

What secret has he passed along to those clients? When you are in a slump, you can still contribute by encouraging your teammates.

Rather than burdening a team with distracting self-doubt and pity, try to help others, he advises. “In order to remain self-motivated, research has found that the innate psychological need for competence must be satisfied,” Mr. Baard says. “This drive pertains not only to the ability to do a job but to achieve something through it—to have impact, to contribute. A way an employee can expand opportunities to satisfy this need is to help her team succeed by encouraging others, even if her direct contributions are limited.”

Age, occupation and family circumstances, among other factors, can all play a part in how workers respond to different stressors. But experts say there are steps that can help you take control of your happiness at work this year.

Find meaning in your tasks. Commitment to a goal beyond self-promotion can help a worker manage stress levels, says John Weaver, a psychologist at Psychology For Business, a Brookfield, Wis.-based employment consultancy.

Several years ago, Mr. Weaver consulted for a long-term-care facility in Wisconsin that had flooded. Because of the water damage, the residents and employees had been forced to move into an already occupied facility. Employees felt cramped and annoyed, he says, and pettiness abounded.

To help the workers regain a positive attitude, Mr. Weaver asked each person this question: Why do you do this work?

“People don’t work in nursing because it pays so much or it’s glamorous or it’s easy,” he says. “As they heard the question you could see their attitude change. They could see the reasons why they needed to work together, to put aside difficulties and compromise, and residents were treated better.”

Remembering why you are in a business can help you manage stress, Mr. Weaver says.

While working on his dissertation, Rick Best, now a health-services scientist for Lockheed Martin, researched stress among nurses who work with veterans, a group that faces high demands with low resources. One might have expected elevated levels of burnout. But there were high levels of satisfaction.

“The meaning they got from their job was high,” says Mr. Best. “They went into the profession of nursing to help people. As a consequence, they derived much meaning from what they were doing, and they were better able to handle stress.”

Reduce your expectations. Given how much energy employees devote to their job, there can be quite a few expectations wrapped up in work. Workers often look to employers for career, socialization, and personal and intellectual growth opportunities.

“With so many expectations, it’s no wonder that work can’t meet all of that. So we get disappointed, but I don’t know that work could fulfill all those things,” says Ken Pinnock, associate director of employee relations and services at the University of Denver.

Due to so many layoffs in the last few years, many have lost friends and colleagues, and have realized that job security, taken for granted at times, is gone. There have also been cuts when it comes to extras, such as educational opportunities, celebrations and room for career advancement.

There can be an element of loss when employees realize that the workplace has changed. However, personal and professional goals can still be pursued without an employer’s support.

“The way back from this is to try to gain perspective about work, realizing that we are still ultimately in charge of our careers and work, and we don’t have to turn to our employers to develop ourselves, or look to them to be responsible for us,” Mr. Pinnock says.

Look at “challenges,” not “problems.” Rather than perceiving problems at work, look at them as challenges.

“The people who approach work as an opportunity to learn are much more satisfied with their jobs and performance, and find themselves eager to take on new challenges,” Mr. Weaver says. “They aren’t trying to prove that they are the smartest. They are more likely to learn from their own experiences and mistakes.”

Setting intermediate goals can also help workers derive a sense of accomplishment, and keep pace with longer-term targets, Mr. Best says.

Write to Ruth Mantell at ruth.mantell@dowjones.com