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The news in today’s Sunday Independent that an eco rally in Oxford will feature cars running on wine, cheese and sewage points the way forward for Stellenbosch as renewable energy capital for SA. It sounds like the perpetual motion machine that sages and physicists have long been looking for. Visit the Stellenbosch Wine Festival, eat and drink your fill and then visit the portaloos to fill up the tank for the trip back to Pinelands, driven by Goodfellas, of course. No need for fracking in the Karoo while there’s poo in Paarl flushed down the drain.
Future wheels for WOSA?
It was standing room only last night in the Clover tent at the Stellenbosch Wine Festival as sandwich sage Emile Joubert made Elvis Presley peanut butter, bacon and banana butties. I was in attendance to slice gherkins for the Cuban pulled pork semi-bunny chows. Quizzed what wine to pour with the Elvis extravaganza, I offered Pinotage as iron banana is a popular style.
Emile Joubert, Demon Sarmie Sculptor
With 60 minutes to spare this morning, we stopped by Vaughan Johnson’s waterfront wine emporium for a realism injection. Vaughan was not happy. “July was our quietest month in 20 years. We’re in the depths of a serious recession.” Portuguese winemaker Aníbal Coutinho attempted to cheer him up with two bottles of Swartland wine he’d made, the Astronaut Chenin Blanc and Pinotage, both 2010 vintages.
Vaughan cast a suspicious eye at the labels through his Lady Gaga spectacles before taking us on a tour of the labels displayed in his shop. His conclusion? “Nothing is good.” Stopping at the shelf labeled hopefully “The Cape’s Best” he commented “You’d expect some decent labels here, but there’s nothing. The best packaging is Johann Rupert’s Cape of Good Hope Pinotage – it comes in a box which the tourists love – but that’s R200 a bottle.” “I thought you don’t like Pinotage,” I offered. “I don’t” he replied.
Vaughan Johnson and Hanneli Rupert-Koegelenberg last year
“Sisters, are doing it for themselves” sings Annie Lennox in Sea Point as she steps out with her new beau, Cape Town gynecologist Mitch Besser. Confirming that the homogametic sex, who control over $20 trillion in consumer spending (about 70% of the global total) are quite capable of choosing their own tipples. This was the thinking behind the revolutionary new wine competition 100 Women, 100 Wines that will bring 100 women from around the country to the luxury V&A Hotel on the Waterfront in late August to choose 100 wines.
Secrecy and Pinotage are not two concepts that gel. After being told we’d have to wait until August 25th to find out the ABSA Top Twenty Pinotages for 2011, industrial scale leaks caused the list to be released one month early. Guess Pinotage is just so explosive, it can’t be kept bottled up.
Pinotage judges
If Elgin is elegantly, what is the Simonsberg?; what is the Swartland? After judging the annual potjiekos grudge cookoff between the two appellations on Saturday, I can offer Sexily Simonsberg and Authentically Swartland as I can’t think of an adverb starting with an “s” that means genuine at the minute. Straight is clearly inappropriate for a region boasting Riebeek-Kasteel (which has much more attractive gays than Greyton, according to RK’s unofficial mayor Anton Espost) and Smallberries has been appropriated by the co-op.
There’s a black south-easter howling through the Cape winelands at the minute: exports are in the toilet, marketers are in denial and an unsympathetic government is threatening to ban alcohol advertising. Nature has been turned upside down and vines are budding in the middle of winter. Things are now so bad, estate owners are even attempting to resuscitate their moribund Estate Owners Association, hoping that terroir will save sales.
Those omens are not peachy: at a meeting last week, the age of attendees read like the residual sugar in a line-up of those NLHs that no one buys anymore. Marketing is the only solution, manne. An unpleasant nettle that has been grasped by the young guns of Elgin who hosted an Elegantly Elgin slap-up dinner and wine pairing last night at Aubergine in the shadow of Parliament. Arranged by that circus master to the best cellars, Jörg Pfützner, fortune favoured the brave and the former apple appies set themselves up against some of the biggest names from France: Arumdale takes on Valandraud; Cluver v. Chablis; Oak Valley against the world and Elgin rarely played second fiddle.
Elegantly Paul Cluver
The Stellenbosch Wine Week kicked off on a spiritual note last night with a performance of Misa Criolla, an amazing folk Argentinean mass, sung by the SA Youth Choir in a most unusual cathedral – the barrel cellar of the Delheim Winery. The street music of Buenos Aires was given a distinct township twist with curio Zulu drums and a boere trekklavier and sufficient ethnic diversity to drive WOSA (the exporter’s association with motto ‘variety is in our nature’) into religious ecstasy.
Cellar becomes Cathedral
WINE magazine is going out with a bang. While the final September print edition threatens to become a sentimental sendoff – I was asked if I’d like to revise my final column but declined, preferring to go with the scoop of how Angolan generals are buying up the Douro, big time and if they’d only taught Portuguese at Paul Roos, Stellenbosch farm prices would be flying – the August edition includes a provocative booklet called WineIQ sponsored by Ultra Liqours. Confirming that Mark Norrish is the Rupert Murdoch of the Winelands and his colourful catalogues are the future of local wine reportage. Does that make Carrie Adams, Wendi Deng?
Debra Meiburg, Master of Wine, is a hot commodity in a hot land – a Californian who has lived in Hong Kong for 25 years and a glamorous wine expert to boot. For HK is undisputed centre of the fine wine universe with last year over 40% of global wine auction turnover channeled through an island of thrusting skyscrapers built with bamboo scaffolds. A gateway to China’s thirsty billion, predicted to have more middle class consumers than Europe within the decade. As such it is the Shangri-la for SA producers battling financial headwinds in their largest export market, the UK.
China: downtown Hong Kong
