When Belgian oenophiles hear that the Jacobsdal wines of Cornelis Dumas are made by the brother of Marlene Dumas, the most expensive living female artist in the world (she hates the soubriquet, but it’s true), “they buy 36 bottles” says Christoph Merchiers of Rouseu Kaapse Wijnen in Ghent. The €10.40 price tag and the brilliant quality of the 2003 Cabernet, helps.

Christoph, dessert and a cow at Belga Queen on Wednesday evening

Having a sister an avant-garde art avatar is one way of marketing your wine in Belgium. For another, you can commission Guido Francque and Fabian Scheys to write the definitive South African Wine Routes book, which is what Willy Rouseu and WOSA have done.

Annette Badenhorst, WOSA’s new point person in the Benelux countries, is a new broom sweeping clean. Scarcely six months ago, Christoph was bemoaning how all the WOSA money was being spent in Holland importing American sommeliers on freebees and other frivolous activities. Now the plan has changed and Belgium is at last getting it’s slice, for with 15 000 restaurants to service 9 million people, Belgium is a thirsty place.

International with Monument is one New York gallery you might have expected to feature Marlene and Guido’s last book on SA wine was called Monuments of SA Wine. Published in 2003, it caused a minor tsunami in the local spittoon when it gave André van Rensburg and Vergelegen the cold shoulder, claiming the wines were “show wines with a hollow core.” At that stage, Vergelegen was the darling of local luvvies, winning trophies and show medals galore.

I’d met Guido judging wine for the Absa Top Ten Pinotage Competition and the Blaauwklippen Blending Competition and had admired the passionate intensity he brought to his mission and his trendy glasses. At that stage, he owned the restaurant Hertog Jan in Brugge and to taste a wine, would open a bottle and sample it over several days. He has now sold the restaurant to his chef and sommelier and perversely, the Hertog has been awarded one star by the Guide Michelin.

Guido and Fabian will be in SA in November, doing fieldwork for the book. To be published in Dutch (and French, later), it will be an invaluable aid to all SA producers lacking a famous artist as sister. My review of it, was published in the Financial Mail in January 2004.

With Belgium the fifth-largest export destination for SA wine, it makes sense for a Bruges-based sommelier to produce a book on the subject: Monuments of SA Wine by Guido Francque and Fabian Scheys.

Sloppy editing mars an otherwise well put together book: the father of biodynamic winemaking was Austrian philosopher Rudolph Steiner, not Rudolph Schneider; coopers make wine barrels, coppersmiths make whisky stills; the Gulf Stream does not cool Cape vineyards, it warms Guido’s homeland and northwestern Europe; and only a marketer as switched-on as Warwick’s Mike Ratcliffe would bristle at being called “Mark” – after all, there’s no such thing as bad publicity, as long as they spell your name right. Sentiments with which son of an adman Anthony Hamilton-Russell will agree: his Southern Right brand was misnamed “Southern Whale”. The SA Wine & Brandy Co’s master plan is surely Vision 2020, since Vision 2002 is hindsight for a book published in 2003.

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