This posting is a fourth order effect, spun off from Cape Town’s most glamorous New Years Eve party hosted by “Texan Billionaire” Preston Haskell IV. The bash went down in Fresnaye, in Preston’s palatial possie “overlooking Cape Town’s Table Mountain” according to the Daily Mail – quite an achievement as I thought only God and Lufthansa first class passengers looked down on Table Mountain.

Hammo and Nicky van der Walt @ Preston's Party (Sunday Times pic by M. Attala)

Of course Preston actually lives in Moscow and hails from Florida where dad Preston Haskell III chairs the largest privately owned construction company in the state. But Texas, where everything is famously bigger, fits the bill, so who cares about facts? Nice to see that Haskell father and son following the Paul Cluver lead, where everyone is called the same thing.

Texan terroir illustrates the Chinese Whispers effect when a local journo speaks to the party PR and is then picked up in the FT Diary by an international hack holidaying in the Mother City who, perhaps pissed at not being invited, ridicules the event. (Note to party PR, wake up! and invite the FT next year). Which is then picked up by me. It’s like the old lady who swallowed a horse.

My only reason for mentioning the party is to bemoan the great PR opportunity missed for Preston’s great Helderberg winery and by extension, SA wine exports. Rather than Texas Billionaire, let the FT mention the Helderberg Hedonist who may even have squeezed in a few bottles of his own stuff among the rivers of “finest French bubbly.” After all, SA is a major producer of party wine. How long before Man About Town Nicky van der Walt (above) makes a Swartland Celebrity Cuvée to take on Eben Sadie.

At least Hemel & Aarde’s Black Prince of Pinot Noir, Anthony Hamilton Russell, was featured in a photo (above) alongside cigar and cocktail. But at least I know Hammo is a wino at heart, even if, like Preston, he is intensely private about his wine habit.