Duncan Fallowell

Yes, I’ve heard South Africa has fabulous winesex. But is Cape Town the only place you don’t get murdered?
Best wishes, Duncan Fallowell

Neil Pendock

Thanks Duncan

Enjoyed the rest of the book, too. Wrote a review for the SA Sunday Times last year – not sure whether it ever appeared though.

Rosé Reconnaissance

Going as far as I can by Duncan Fallowell, Profile, 2008, pp. 279, R232.

Don’t believe everything you read. Reviewing this bohemian travelogue of New Zealand in the Spectator in February, Anthony Sattin concludes “This isn’t a book for everyone. Some will find his diary-entry style too self-indulgent. Others will be put off by his sexual preferences, for this is also an account of a search for like-minded men, eventually found through escort listings and in the basements of *** *** shops as well as in bookshops and wineries.”

It is nothing of the sort and after a cramped Air France flight to Paris I can confirm that the only thing Fallowell tries to pick up in wineries, is a decent bottle of rosé – something he fails to do, even after breakfast with Bob Campbell MW, New Zealand’s Mr. Wine. His recommendation – an Ata Rangi – is rubbish.

The best rosé – a Gibbston Valley blanc de Pinot Noir – comes recommended by The Grape, a Central Otago wine shop, and one of the best wine reviews, shades of Evelyn Waugh, makes this book worth the price. “Ah! Nostrils quiver above the tantalizing surface and young geishas disrobe among blossom, a brook babbles through an apple orchard, and distant laughter – blond and pinktipped – passes over a daisy field…”

Fallowell follows in the footsteps of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh – whose countrywide tour with the Old Vic had an effect on NZ rather like the postwar visit of the Royal family had on SA. With the annual Nederburg Auction reportedly looking for a dynamic speaker this year, they could do far worse than offer the berth to Mr. Fallowell. If he writes a book half as brilliantly idiosyncratic about the SA Winelands, rosé sales in Notting Hill will explode like the proverbial rocket.