The Bilton, a 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon, was launched on the day a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami took out northern Japan. The effect on the SA wine scene was not nearly as dramatic with the many luvvies, terroir tourists and self promoters seemingly not invited to the launch, stamping their tiny feet in impotent fury.

But then there were only 500 bottles of the stuff made and it does retail for R3000 a pop. One passed-over pundit took his hissy fit into the columns of the Mail & Guardian, a newspaper which takes lifestyle issues increasingly seriously, and trashed the wine untasted in probably the worst piece of “wine writing” in SA this year and a challenge to the new ethical code at the M&G.

The Bilton came up in conversation at lunch at KWV yesterday and Cathy Marston, winsome wine educator without the ego, who has tasted it, said she liked it, calling it “Amarone in style.” Of course trashing the wine (untasted) for its 500% new wood is deeply hypocritical as many icons like Grange Hermitage are aided by the addition of powdered tannin sourced from chestnuts and goodness knows how many barrel equivalents of tannin that equates to, while more than one local big name swears by liquid tannin extracted from oak staves. Hats off to Bilton and their Big Five, say I.

Christian Eedes

“Let’s go halvies on a bottle” suggested Old Mutual Trophy Show judge Christian Eedes (above), but then the conversation swung off onto the WOSA tangent, with WOSA director Jeff Gradwell assuring diners that WOSA strategy is being urgently re-evaluated. Let’s hope the disastrous Luanda Lift-Off tasting gets investigated as one poor hack on a WOSA freebee received a cell-phone bill for R13 000 for four days of tweets and Facebook. Seems that Angola has the highest international roaming charges in the world.

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