“Imma let you finish” as Kanye West memorably told Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards presentation for Best Female Video on Sunday. But let me steal the microphone from Lorraine Immelman-Steyn “founder and director of” (simpler to say OWNER) The Michelangelo International Wine Awards for a few paragraphs.

Kanye West as Keynote Speaker at Veritas?

In an attempt to keep the standards of her classically inappropriately named wine competition aloft, Lis limits the judges to one South African – Christine Rudman – to allow the crystal voices of such wine superstars as Sagi Cooper from Israel and Hwee Peng Lim from Singapore to be heard.

Which could explain how the best rated wine scored 99.6%, better even than Matric results in Natal. Such precision is unheard of in wine pundity and I wonder what a Château Margaux 2000 would rate at MIWA. Let’s hope this outcome is not a replay of a previous competition when a couple of well oiled Scandinavian judges were giving full marks to corked entries and offering to fight any judge who disagreed.

But the problem comes with another Law from Lis: limiting the number of medals awarded to 30% of entries “in accordance with the rules of the Michelangelo International Wine Awards.” 1502 entries translates to a glass ceiling of 451 medals, yet 524 were awarded. So the entire result is null and void and producers can presumably look forward to getting their entrance fees back.

A couple of other Kanye komments on the winners. “Whodaf*ck is Ntida Cellars? The bitch of Peter Sellers?” Top Producer Trophy awarded to a non-existing entity or is this a Boets Nel moment of throwing away an I when Die Krans became De Krans?

Is the double gold Graham Beck 2008 Sauvignon Blanc the same wine discounted down to R25 from R69 in the Robertson and Franschhoek cellars of GB a couple of months ago? What is the Graham Beck Marketing Department smoking and could we all get some? Why enter a fire-sale wine into an expensive competition when you presumably have the 2009 vintage to sell? But the Good Value Guru does love a DG wine at R25.

Wineland deals

Another Lis innovation is to trawl the list of winners and cherry pick producers with some extraneous property to receive an “organic”, “garagiste” or “Pinotage” trophy. As Lis comments on the first: “I support the move towards fewer chemicals in all products. This exceptional wine proves that organically-made wines do not have to stand back for any other wines out there. The organic wines are not judged separately, they are judged with the other wines, which means this is not just a great organic wine, but a great wine overall.”

But why stop at Organic? Let’s have a Gay Trophy. A Bearded Trophy. A Leftie Trophy and a Ginge Trophy.

A keen MIWA judge for 2011

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