As Grande Roche head sommelier Josephine Gutentoft poured me a glass of Paul Cluver Noble Late Harvest 2009 as accompaniment to my topfenknoedel dessert at Bosman’s Restaurant last night, conversation turned to why three of the perhaps half-a-dozen qualified sommeliers in SA hail from Sweden.

In addition to Josephine, there is dapper Joakim Hansi at the Roundhouse in Camps Bay plus marvelous Mia Martennson, now rebadged as wine whizz at Alex Dale’s Winery of Good Hope operation on the Helderberg. Three Tons of Fun got it wrong when they complained “it’s raining men” at yesterday’s Nederburg Auction. Thanks to Global Warming, it’s raining Swedes.

Josephine Gutentoft and Paul Cluver

Gourmet dinner host Paul Cluver has invited petite Josephine to lunch today at his Mountain Kingdom of Wine in Elgin as he has Nederburg Auction speakers Marie Nygren and Sara Norell from the national liquor monopoly Systembolaget, coming for a sauna and salad. Let’s hope he serves them his Seven Flags Pinot Noir 2008, a wine which sets a new benchmark for the heartbreak grape in SA.

The 2009 vintage NLH poured by Josephine is also one of the finest ever made in SA but alas it seems to have fallen between two Ikea stools: inexplicably overlooked for five star glory in the Platter wine guide (nominations are made with the labels exposed), the wine was also not submitted to yesterday’s record-breaking Nederburg Auction. Which is a true pity, as the wine would have shot the lights out faster than Lizbeth Salander in a Stieg Larsson skop-skiet-en-donner-in-Stockholm novel.

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