Sour Grapes, my amateur exposé of SA wine, is at the printers and Tafelberg tell me it will be out in October. In the meantime, I’m hard at work on a sequel with a working title Pendock Gets the Pip: seeded players and other wine scams with no shortage of subject material.

The title was chosen by Tafelberg and when I commented that it would be a popular choice with the Widow and other anoraques at Grape, Tafelberg were nonplussed. They’d not met the Widow and thought grapes were a) what US marines called their heads, b) things you ate or c) fruity things you squashed to make wine. I’d wanted to call it Cellar Notes of a Wine Amateur in homage to George Saintsbury’s Notes on a Cellar-Book, published in 1920, but alas, it didn’t meet with the approval of the people who paid the advance.

I chose Tafelberg as publisher because they asked me to write the book and because they published Louis Leipoldt, my favourite SA wine writer. Not that Sour Grapes is in the same league as 300 Years of SA Wine, of course.

The most interesting thing about the book is its fierce independence. No animals were harmed during its writing nor did I receive largesse or lasagna from any producer, distributor, retailer, restaurateur, importer or exporter. It’s ridiculous to have to point such things out, but SA wine writing is such a murky endeavour, these things need to be said sometimes.

The cover illustration is shown above. Here are some of the ones that didn’t make the cut.