Linda Manzini, MD of Diners Club, is like Oprah Winfey, but with better hair: dynamic, enthusiastic, with an infectious laugh that makes you feel like an old friend even though you’ve only just met. Having the good fortune to sit opposite her at yesterday’s blow-out lunch of Wagu cheeks at the One&Only to announce the winner of the Diners Club Winemaker of the Year Competition and hearing her defend SA wine, Linda sounded more like the CEO of WOSA (Wines of SA, the exporters’ association) than the MD of a credit card company.

Linda Manzini

Linda has a plan – to take SA wine international. For Diners Club, their Winemaker of the Year Competition is “our signature event.” After last year’s fiasco when the winner was disqualified for having insufficient stock (the same situation prevailing at the runner-up led to the award being abandoned for 2008), Diners has taken management of the competition in-house. The magnitude of the disaster for 2008 organizer WINE magazine was confirmed by copies of the fat (178-page) and glossy Signature magazine handed out to lunchers. Containing profiles of winners and retail opportunities to buy winning wines through the Diners Club Wine Society, the serious lifestyle ads in the organ were enough to chill the pygies of any passing lifestyle magazine publishers.

It turns out that Diners has been talking seriously to Diners Club USA about taking SA wine around the world. “We have a whole bunch of Diners Club franchise holders flying down to Fancourt in two weeks time and we’ll be showcasing our winning wines to them. At the end of January we’ll be taking some SA winemakers to Helsinki to showcase their wines – and this is only the beginning” revealed Linda. Previous Diners Club Winemaker of the Year Pieter Ferreira perked up at the news, but alas for the king of bubbles, the end of January will be the start of his harvest, ruling out any foreign trips for a few weeks at least.

Linda and Pieter

The WOSA-sponsored gang of UK wine hacks currently in the Cape (according to blogs and rumours as details are solely on a need-to-know-basis) were conspicuous by their absence at the lunch to publicize the most important competition on the SA winemaking calendar. Organizations such as WOSA, Diners Club, Veritas, Pinotage Association, etc. running parallel universes of marketing initiatives in splendid isolation seems an inefficient way to achieve the same objective of promoting SA wine to the rest of the world. Some kind of co-ordination makes a lot of sense and perhaps Linda is the breath of fresh air to achieve this.

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