Cognac, Caviar, Country

The Louis XIII × Shin'Labo experience went beyond a conventional pairing. It was a design project that took two years. With T'lur, Malaysia's first tropical caviar farm, in Tanjung Malim, Perak, I bred, monitored and cured a custom caviar to a set salinity, chosen to bring out the layered aromas of a Louis XIII decanter built on eau-de-vie aged for up to a century. The caviar carried my name, and the pairing was hosted only at Shin'Labo. It is the nearest my work has come to a real laboratory of luxury.

What I asked Louis XIII to consider

A house like Louis XIII does not change easily. The decanter has not changed. Nor has the blend: eau-de-vie aged for up to a century, drawn from more than a thousand vineyards in the Grande Champagne. The pairing partners for each global activation are chosen with care, and never improvised.

When the maison brought Les Voyages du Caviar to Malaysia in early 2022, the protocol called for caviar from a French house. I asked them to consider a Malaysian caviar instead, custom-cured to a salinity that would lift the cognac’s floral and spicy notes without overpowering them. The maison replied that if I had confidence in the producer, they would have confidence in me.

The activation went ahead as proposed. It was the first Louis XIII activation anywhere in the world to use a Malaysian caviar, and this was no off-the-shelf tin. It was made for the cognac, developed over two years, and it carried my name.

The James Won Custom Caviar: two years with T’lur

T’lur is Malaysia’s first tropical caviar farm, based at Tanjung Malim in Perak. It raises sturgeon to international standard at a tropical aquaculture site, something European caviar houses had long thought impossible. What T’lur and I built together went well beyond sourcing. It was a two-year custom-development programme.

Species selection. A hybrid of Kaluga and Amur sturgeon. Both are prized on the world market for the size, firmness and creaminess of their pearls, and both are rare in Southeast Asian production. Kaluga brings weight and umami; Amur brings the cleaner, brighter finish a cognac at this level needs. The hybrid has both.

Chef-led curing. I followed the sturgeons’ growth at Tanjung Malim throughout the development period and worked with the farm to make and cure the caviar to exact specification. We brought the salt well down, far below what a standard caviar carries, so the cognac’s subtle floral and spicy notes could come through. The pearls kept the firmness the cure could give them, without the brine the cognac could not take.

Freshness. Because the caviar is produced locally in Perak, it could be served very fresh, without the heavy preservatives that imported Russian or Iranian caviar needs to survive the trip. Fresh caviar speaks for itself, and next to a hundred-year-old cognac that freshness is the contrast that makes the pairing work.

The result was the James Won Custom Caviar. It did not exist before this work, and it now links Malaysian aquaculture with the world’s great spirits houses.

The pairings at Shin’Labo

The custom caviar linked the food and the cognac throughout the Caviar Sensation Experience at Shin’Labo. Three dishes show it most clearly.

Signature Caviar & Uni Tart. A “sunflower”, with a heart of the custom caviar at the centre and petals of creamy Hokkaido uni around it. This was the main pairing for the Louis XIII. The cognac is meant to be chewed like meat against the fat of the roe, which draws the spicy finish forward while the brine pulls out the floral notes.

Imperial Cha-Don with caviar. A rice bowl made to fine-dining standard. The caviar adds a salty, briny note that balances the earthy richness of the rice and steadies the cognac’s complexity for the first sip.

Hokkaido Scallop with caviar. A high point of the multi-course menu, where the freshness of the local cure could stand on its own. Imported caviar would have tasted preserved next to the scallop. This cure tasted alive, and in that company the cognac became the older voice in the room, making space for the younger one.

The pairings were offered as a full Caviar Sensation Experience, which could be taken with a full decanter of Louis XIII for group bookings or as individual tasting sets.

What the chapter shows

For the length of this project, Shin’Labo became something close to a laboratory for luxury. A Malaysian aquaculture producer at Tanjung Malim, a hundred-year-old French cognac, a Japanese-Malaysian yōshoku room at Lalaport KL, and two years of development to bring them together in a single tart. It is one of the clearest examples in my work of what a brand collaboration can do when both sides commit to the time the development needs.

The principle behind it is simple. When a maison comes to Malaysia, it should leave knowing more about Malaysia than when it arrived. Louis XIII left knowing about T’lur, and about a kind of caviar it had not met before, made for a cognac it had spent a century maturing.

What stayed

After Shin’Labo closed in 2024, the James Won Custom Caviar pairing programme became part of the archive. The relationship with T’lur, and the conservation thinking it pointed towards, carried on into the Serumpun Sarawak work that began the same year. Looking back, the custom caviar was where my brand work and my conservation work started to meet.

The archive: other frames

A few more frames from the Caviar Sensation shoot at Shin’Labo, kept here for the record and for any guest who wants to look a little longer before leaving the page.