Su Birch, CEO of WOSA, the wine exporters’ embattled mouthpiece, tweets this morning “Cape Wine 2012 is aiming to be the first green wine show ever. Join us from 25-27 September in Cape Town, and see just how.” Which is bizarre, as Su has unilaterally banned the wine drinking public from CW2012, thereby throwing wine tourism show Vindaba into crisis as few produccers will be able to justify two tasting tables at the same venue at the same time.

Producers should standby for a vicious backlash and using social media to promote an exclusive party only rubs salt into the wounds. I’m heading off to the Roundhouse tomorrow for a tasting of some of the Spanish wines Shoprite/Checkers import into SA, sales WOSA seems to be doing its best to promote.

That WOSA are marketing Cape Wine 2012 as a green show is also unfortunate and confirms a limited understanding of current issues in the international wine scene by WOSA management. When it comes to wine, especially reds, green means unripe with hard tannins as WOSA would have discovered if they’d been invited to the excellent green flavours tasting Charles Hopkins presented at De Grendel on behalf of the Cape Winemakers Guild earlier this month. CWG rings alarm bells about green wine; WOSA embraces it. Mixed messages galore!

The industry urgently needs to step in and redirect Cape Wine 2012 or it will become another disaster epic the industry has come to expect from the dizzy donkeys of Dorp Street, shown above.