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Geneva-based investment gnome Adrian Vanderspuy is a cautious trader. Before he bought his 50ha viticultural eden consisting of an isolated koppie in the Banghoek Valley outside Stellenbosch (Adrian has bravely reverted to the original scaredy-pants spelling from the more anodyne Banhoek of Stellenbosch bureaucrats) he did some careful research into the farm and its viticultural potential. Well this investment is right on the money and his Oldenburg Cabernet Sauvignon 2008 is probably the finest New World Cabernet this side of Stephen Henschke’s Eden Valley efforts in South Australia. A magnificent, sweetly fruited masterpiece made by Simon Thompson in the pioneering perfumed mould of Etienne le Riche, the master of this style in the Jonkershoek, a forgotten valley full of Afrikaans billionaires. Sans mint, sans tomato paste; in a word, wonderful (the wine, not the billionaires).
Oldenburg (left) and Henschke (right), terroir twins
Happy 40th birthday for yesterday, Christian Eedes, former enfant terrible of SA wine writing, now graduated to adulte terrible. As a present, the debate you predicted on the lack of a gold medal for Chenin Blanc at the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show last week. Sorry it’s not wrapped!
That there was no Old Mutual golden Chenin is simple: only 48 wines were submitted – probably on account of the embarrassing negative correlation between the show owner and a high profile OM taster at the Chenin Challenge earlier this year, highlighted in postings passim. But if you’re looking for a gold medal Chenin, try the Oldenburg 2010 which won gold at the International Wine Challenge in London today – I know I did.
Oldenburg winemaker Simon Thompson, reprising the role of Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child
Winemakers along the Groot Gariep are having a memorable vintage. First a flood of Noah-esque proportions to wash away their vineyards and now the news that the London Mega Tasting of SA wine is being rebranded Cape Wine Europe, a kick in the keister for producers outside the Western Cape.
Groot Gariep grape farmer
The customer is always right, so when he asks for his wine in a 3 litre bag-in-box (as they do in Sweden, so Mrs. Larsson will not see how much Stieg is drinking) guyconic producers (iconic, but applied to men) like João Portugal Ramos and KWV queue up to offer their jewels in a box like the ones below.
With the London Wine Trade Fair kicking off on Tuesday, bar flies from around the world are buzzing off to Blighty. The Weekend Financial Times is required reading in the Business Class lounges frequented by marketers (winemakers travel poverty, so its crowded concourses for them). So could WOSA, the SA wine exporters mouthpiece, have pulled off a guerilla marketing coup by posing a timeous question to WFT agony uncle Sir David Tang, thankfully restored to the Pink Pages after an unexplained Easter absence?
Last day in Lisboa. Dinner last night with Trapiche winemaker Daniel Pi at Brasserie de L’Entrecôte – Headquarters restaurant on Buitengracht in Cape Town with attitude replaced by naughty children pushing past your chair and steak from Holland. As meat is the only thing on the menu, we’d brought along pasteis de nata from the suburb of Belém next door, for dessert. Two each, which we doused in cinnamon and ate with a twenty year old Fonseca tawny and a twenty year old ruby port from Taylors. Tawny was my food and wine match and Daniel tweeted photos to his 450 followers.
Daniel (holding the dessert) and Anibal last night
With the world on the edge of their seats waiting for the Eurovision Song Contest tonight, Norwegians are increasingly turning to the Swartland for liquid sustenance to see them through all the excitement.
Launch of the Swartland Independent in January
Another year, another Franschhoek wine writing competition and as expected, another scandal. This time the winning entry appeared in a UK magazine – The World of Fine Wine – whose contributing editor, Andrew Jefford, was one of the three judges.
In fact, Andy wrote a couple of stories in the edition in which the winning piece, a faux touristico-historical recount of the well-known Vin de Constance PR opportunity, appeared, making it into the table of contents of the weighty organ, unlike the winning entry. Do letters to the editor count? Andy’s participation was publicized before entries closed, so clearly no blind tasting this, unless Andy recused himself?
I had planned to boycott (like last year when Tim Atkin was the judge from hell who trashed SA wine writers, calling them barely qualified fans with typewriters, before judging entries) but Marilyn Cooper, Principal of the Cape Wine Academy, beat me to it and entered on my behalf. I thought it churlish to refuse when the organizers asked if the game was on and besides, what a joke if the entry was my Sarie Kos invention of Zef Wine, which is reproduced below in translation from Afrikaans. Quite a change in style to the maiden aunt angst of the winner that I thought US judge Jay McInerney at least, might like.
Ducking charges of Sour Grapes, the real tragedy is that, like last year, the winning entry appeared in a foreign publication with less readership in SA than the journal of Architectural Marvels of Ulan Bator and at £40 a back copy, unlikely to become a best seller anytime soon. Is this really what the sponsors had in mind? And why must there always be suspicions of a scam? Is this an African thing? A Franschhoek (“sunny place for shady people”) thing? A fine wine thing? Other Franschhoek producers are unlikely to be best pleased.
Successive server errors dissolved the first day of the Concurso Nacional de Vinhos in Santerém yesterday into chaos. But this was no sommelier meltdown like our own Fundi fiasco, but rather the Millennium Bug arrived in rural Portugal eleven years late as the all-singing, all-dancing distributed judging computer network fell over, several times.
Mining sand is an industry widely practiced along the scenic Moselle River separating Germany and Luxembourg in the leafy navel of Europe. One of the more novel applications of all this digging is making designer hills for vineyards, all neatly oriented towards the most favourable aspect. All a bit Noddy in Toy Town perhaps, but this is terroir by truck on an industrial scale. A second spin-off is creating lakes for recreation. In fact the whole region has the feel of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, with bulldozers bequeathing what glaciers did not.
Vineyard viewing in style
