Stuffed into the Christmas stocking of SA producers is a list of Decanter’s favourite 25 wines as chosen by UK controversial commentator Tim Atkin. With the Decanter World Wine Awards certainly the most expensive wine competition extravagantly supported by the SA industry, a little bit of coverage in the modestly monikered “quite simply the world’s best wine magazine” makes a lot of marketing sense for Decanter with the deadline for submission of entries coming up. The magazine has already started advertising for temporary show staff at £120 a day – a fortune in SA. As judging takes place geographically, pity that SA wine can’t be assessed in situ to keep jobs in the third world and save on the carbon footprint of all those big footed (not to mention, bottomed) SA judges and many thousands of bottles flying off to Blighty in April.

Adi Badenhorst, empty-handed

Tim takes great pains to kit himself out in rubber as the Bad Boy of SA Wine, sort of Adam Ant with less hair, although the burnt rubber fiasco was very much last year. This year, his crusade was to persuade UK tipplers to drink local to save the planet from the scourge of heavy bottles whizzing round the globe, grande marque Champagne excluded, natch. Indeed Tim positively courts controversy: “I expect [my list] to provoke debate, not only in South Africa but elsewhere.” Of course it won’t, as it is a typical colonial construct of curios shown to visiting pundits imported by WOSA (Wines of SA, the exporters’ mouthpiece) and trawled around “safe” producers. With a few bottles thrown into the mix at a Mega-Tasting in London. There is not a single unexpected face in sight even if Adi Badenhorst’s famous lamb chop sideburns are conspicuous by their absence after their star turn in the FT Xmas laundry list of Jancis Robinson. Ditto Oak Valley, Nedbank’s Green Champ (and carbon midget) whose wine isn’t half bad, either.

While there is at least one Cape Wine Master who would argue that Kango Co-op is missing in action (he scored it 19/20 at the WINE magazine Shiraz Challenge and it romped home in second place) there is not a single “new discovery”, “undiscovered gem” or edgy wine in sight. Like Testalonga from Craig Hawkins or an oxidative Viognier from Rudi de Wet. A Port from Alwyn Liebenberg, a Cab from Webersburg or a Karusa from the Karoo. Tim’s list is so boring, I fell asleep three times reading it and if it wasn’t for SA producers desperately retweeting their inclusion, it would sink without a bubble of Tim’s favourite gas, CO2.

But then what did Decanter expect asking Tim to compile an SA list? OK, so he has been to SA a dozen times in 18 years and made the ultimate terroir sacrifice marrying a South African, but chaps, the days of Empire are over and dem darn natives be restless. Maybe next time ask Tim’s fellow golfer Remington Norman, who spends half a year in Somerset West. It’s a start.

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