Is SA wine serious about China?  The list of 27 exhibitors at next week’s VinExpo in Hong Kong – or Hong Kok as my dyslexic friend Pinky calls it (with Bang Kong presumably the capital of Thailand) concentrates very much on terroir by truck wines.  Commercial wines sold mainly on price.

Where are the terroir treasures, the Kanonkops, Vergelegens and Meerlusts?  Not a single one of the controversial UCT Top Twenty wineries are attending, although UCT’s self-appointed professor of wine, Tim James, has at last done the decent thing and signed up for a non-UCT e-mail with which to communicate with the industry.  Perhaps the Platter guide will send Professor Tim east to present this year’s 5* stunners in the next chapter of the unseemly commercial luv-in between the guide and WOSA, the exporters’ mouthpiece.

Progressive SA producers looking east are:

Baarsma, Beau Joubert Vineyards & Winery, Cape Legends, Cloof Wine Estate, DGB, Distell, Diverse Flavours, G.G. Wines, KWV, La Motte, Leopards Leap, MAN Vintners, Namaqua, Napier Winery, Oldenburg Vineyards, Overhex Wines International, Raka, Remhoogte, Slent Farms, StellenRust, The Company of Wine People, uniWines, Van Loveren Famliy Cellar [sic], , Vinimark Trading (Pty) Ltd, Vrede en Lust Wine Estate, Waterkloof and Waterstone Wines