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For many wine nuts the annual Reciprocal wine tasting is the most expensive evening of the year. Michael Fridjhon & Co. showcase their imports from around the world, most of which are carefully selected and outstanding representatives of their country of origin. These imported wines range from very affordable and quite often beating our locals in price and quality, to upmarket prices for Premier and Grand Cru wines.
Michael Fridjhon
An occasional series of postings highlighting alleged irregularities at the recent Michelangelo International Wine Awards
Vouchsafed as Uncorked is with some explosive accusations concerning the recent MIWA competition, I thought the most responsible course of action would be to inform producers of some strange anomalies that they can follow up with the show owner and Sue van Wyk CWM, technical director of the competition.
Albert reacts to the best wine of show result
Is Pretoria making a bid to become rainmaker at the Cape Winemakers’ Guild Auction? Certainly bidding on the charity wines at a recent warm-up auction held at Ristorante Ritrovo in Snor City shot out the lights, with R5000 paid to see the six pack of Pierre Wahl, winemaker/personal trainer/body double at Rijk’s in Tulbagh.
Gary Jordan's Whole Nine Yards
Had a chance to taste the 2011 Glen Carlou unwooded Chardonnay recently and was blown away by its concentration and focus. Which must come from fermentation in one of Mr. Nomblot’s famous concrete eggs, shown below in February, with Lavender and Chris Patten and winemaker Arco Laarman. I always thought that the brand name Glen Carlou came from the Scottish demeanor and windswept (h)air of founder Walter Finlayson, until I was told it was the first three letters of the names of the daughters of the owner Walter bought the farm from back in 1980: Len, Car and Lou. A bit like Tokara, then.
Lavender, Chris and Arco
Nederburg Neutrino. Now there’s a brand name for incoming Nederburg marketing guru Wencke Grobler to conjure with. For the week after the 37th Nederburg Auction shot out the lights, scientists in Italy trapped 15000 neutrinos fired at them from Geneva that had broken the speed limit. And boy were the flying – 6Km/second faster than the speed limit decreed by Albert Einstein, the über-traffic cop. Such a big number, he called it “c” in his memorable equation E=mc2 or E=mcc which the Cap Classique Association should appropriate as slogan.
Albert reacts to the Michelangelo results
“For 51 weeks a year, Johannesburg is owned by the corporates” commented Ricky Burnett, curator of The Horse: multiple views of a singular beast at the Everard Read gallery in Rosebank. “But for the week of the Art Fair, the city belongs to me and my people.”
Naughty Boy of SA Art, Wayne Barker @ the JHB ART FAiR
Wine commentator Mr. Min comes down firmly on the side of the Nederburg Auction in the Battle of the Auctions underway at the minute. Nederburg last week (sorry to have missed Mr. Min on both days of Nederburg) and the Cape Winemakers Guild, this coming Saturday.
Writing on his Gape blog, Mr. Min notes “if Checkers [supermarkets] manages to flog the wine [they bought last week] to shopping housewives and the like smartly, the local wine industry should give them a heroic handshake. So much more significant, from a wine cultural point of view, than the other auction where yuppies shout up prices against one another, and glow in the power of their money, never mind what’s in the glass.”
A typical CWG Auction bidder as seen by Mr. Min
An extraordinary information meeting has been scheduled for 3pm on Monday at the Swartland Winery. Urgent rumour speculates that the information to be divulged will be that Charles Back of Fairview/Goats do Roam fame will take over the struggling winery. If true, this is good news for SA wine, as Charles is the most gifted wine marketer in the business, by a country mile.
With the Rugby World Cup in full swing, batten down the hatches for a rush of stories of Springboks making wine. But the real interest comes when doctors prescribe Pinotage instead of pills and swap the stethoscope for the spittoon. Dr. Alvi van der Merwe from Alvi’s Drift has both claims to fame: Oupa Alvi was a Springbok flank from the 1930s and his two grandsons were no slouches on the field either. Invited to Rawsonville for lunch, Alvi’s wines confirmed that while media waves battle to penetrate the Du Toitskloof Mountains, wine certainly doesn’t stop at the Huguenot Tunnel and the R26 toll is well worth paying to source some value-for-money gems.
Duimpie's eland
The most useful suggestion made by Nederburg Auction speaker David White on Saturday was for brands to hire social media managers to engage with the public. Some wineries were ahead of the curve and already employ tweeters – with mixed results. One Franschhoek producer engaged vicariously in a war of words on Twitter last week while another tweets so much, it’s hard to believe he gets any work done at all.
Yet on the South Africa Undiscovered homepage of The Telegraph, I could find evidence of only one wine social media manager who recommends “if you’re heading to Stellenbosch and want a fantastic wine tasting experience followed by the most ideallic [sic] setting for lunch try Vredenheim wine farm.. memorable! www.vredenheim.co.za”
Vredenheim surf the social media tsunami
