Door-stopped at Café Dijon yesterday by guerilla label designers Rohan Etsebeth and Jan Solms, a distant relation to Marc Solms of Solms Delta fame. “We come from the bergie side of the Solms family tree.” I was invited to die eikestad to eat roast suckling pig at the annual Joaquim Sá Porra Party and Stellenbosch is an appropriate venue given that those famous Black Pigs from Alentejo which “taste so good, ‘cos theys eats so good” to quote Farmer Brown on the subject of chickens.

In the porcine case, the menu includes acorns from the cork oaks that grow in wild profusion south of the Tagus (hence Alentejo) in Portugal. And since Joaquim is Mr. Cork, putting suckling pig on the menu also makes sense. Although I noticed he was sticking to the over-ripe tomatoes with creamy white cheese (dodgy stomach) and had to be teased into eating succulent belly fat.

Partying on pig in Stellenbosch yesterday

Rohan and Jan had brought along an (empty) bottle of 2008 Malbec and Tempranillo made by two flying winemakers the Grape side of thirty: Stefan Gerber whose day job is making the stuff for Wendy Appelbaum at De Morgenzon and Alexander Milner who makes wine at the family seat of Natte Vallei on the Simonsberg.

We’d be invited to bring something along to complement suckling pig and this 60:40 blend would have done the trick. Called “Boer and Brit” it features a Goodbye, Dolly Gray sepia label of a “rooinek and a rockspider” and the mysterious motto “with the body of a Boer and the nose of an Englishman, you can’t go wrong.” The two winemakers certainly fit the respective parts as Stefan is a direct descendant of Oom Paul Kruger, last president of the Transvaal Republic while Alexander’s great grandfather was Field Marshall John French.

Rohan and Jan

The duo design labels in deepest, darkest Stellenbosch and have a witty Bitterkomix sensibility. A million miles away from the William Kentridge creations Eben Sadie (the only Swartland producer featured in recently published Essential Guide to SA Wines) plans to adopt for a range of six vinous curiosities next year, I bet.

“But Is It Art?” I hear Louis Jansen van Vuuren ask as he alights from the helicopter for the opening of his show in the Winelands with Annette, wife to Naspers Chairman Ton Vosloo, last week. But then you’re asking in ‘n stad overrun by Art. The city fathers recently installed a larger than life Dylan Lewis sculpture of a rhinoceros, grazing on die Braak. I prefer them smaller and in plastic, for bottleneck trinkets like the black plastic bulls favoured by Concha y Toro. Maybe Rohan can do sculptures, too, to chirp up the red bottle neck capsule, wittily labeled “rooinek.”

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