Hi 23C° Low 6C° | 
The Wheel Deal
15 hours ago
GabiVille
1 day, 12 hours ago
Pendock Uncorked
2 days, 10 hours ago
The Wanderer
1 week, 3 days agoView all Times LIVE Blogs
The UCT Top 20 poll of SA wineries as reported in the Mail & Guardian today speaks way more to the competence and conflicts of interest of the judges than in does about SA wine quality. The poll was solicited on the digital equivalent of a UCT letter head: sent from an academic e-mail account with a UCT office telephone number by a member of the staff of that institution – that infamous barefoot agent provocateur Tim James. I refused to participate for various reasons. If bag had a sense of humour, I’d say today’s poll was Sunday’s list and the real one would be revealed later.
Down to some serious stuff at the Concours Mondial du Sauvignon last night – matching Sauvignon to some of the local delicacies of Aquitaine: fried pork fat, pigs ears and blood pudding. Oysters are a cinch and it’s hard to beat the sharp wines from Touraine in this department. But we were almost evicted from the Bordeaux Brasserie for claiming that an €18 Spaniard with a curly G sandblasted onto the bottle was a great all round match. Well at least we assume it was Spanish and Sauvignon Blanc because the only thing on the bottle was G – no vintage, no alcohol admission even. Perhaps Gerard Holden from Franschhoek has been visiting. It’s hard to argue in the basement of the Brasserie (below) as people throw bread at you from the balcony above before you make your point.
Browsing the internet this morning, I nearly swallowed my veneers when I saw Platter pundit Angela Lloyd described as “a Cape winemaster” in a depressing story on the dearth of SA icons by Ant Rose in Decanter magazine. Like most serious SA tasters, Angela is a glorious amateur – no MW or CWM “qualifications” I’m afraid, Ant. Where’s the excitement? asked Ant noting that “the Cape is the only New World giant without any icon wines to its name.” Well Ant, if you want excitement, hanging out with Ange and the Platter pips is a sure way to miss the jol. Give me a call next time and I’ll take you to the Alexander Bar.
But how typical of the colonialists at Decanter to commission a soutie to write an in-depth story on SA icon wines. They should call it “terroir by tourist.” The story appeared five years ago this month, so has anything changed. Are there any icons out there?
Vince Taylor
So some heavyweight SA wine producers (below) met at the 12 Apostles last week and issued a press release yesterday calling on “media and wine judges” to “do away with negative reporting about wine but, to rather align themselves in a new manner behind South African icon wines. Support, rather than undermining these wines is now required. Media was also asked to more often write about the extraordinary elements of South African wine.”
I met KWV marketing guru Jeff Gradwell a millennium ago in the ancient deserts of Namibia. Back then he was brand manager at Nederburg and had come up with the crazy idea of tasting all the vintages of Edelkeur ever made in the eerie Valley of the Moon. Probably the best vertical of stickies ever held south of the equator, it confirmed that Jeff’s imagination is as broad as the Swakopmund River, but not as dry. The Nederburg connection was remade last week when SA’s leading lifestyle brand lost its black white winemaker Tariro Masayiti (below) to KWV, where he will make reds. As comedienne Angela Lloyd tweeted him “remember colour comes from the skins!” which curls the toes on so many different levels.
Tariro Masayiti
Amazing what you learn from the Weekend Financial Times. Sunday’s interview with avant garde film director John Waters produced “balloonies, or people with a sexual interest in balloons.” “I really don’t get it” opined John “but maybe I’m being stuffy. It’s safe. We should encourage that kind of behaviour. No one gets pregnant at a balloony party.”
Positive Pinotage article in the Wine Enthusiast this month. Which makes the Platter guide’s failure to award even one of the 8 or 9 wines nominated sighted for five stars the full monty, even more curious. Some Sherlock Holmes-style sleuthing reveals that it was probably an unlucky assignment of Pinotage to one of two Platter five star panels which did for the Pinotage prospects. My deep throat reports that so many wines were nominated for five star glory this year, the pawpaw yellow Platter pips were divided into two teams of 8. A most auspicious number in Chinese numerology.
Anoraks experienced a wobble in their woggles this week over accusations that tasters for the 2012 Platter sighted guide do not have enough exposure to international wines. This surely does not apply to one high profile Platter pundit Michael Fridjhon who is one of SA’s leading wine importers and he presumably tastes what he buys. Of course his claim in yesterday’s Business Day that “The Platter Guide… reviews all the South African wines likely to be available for sale in the year ahead” is simply not true as the country’s largest wine retailer, Tops at Spar, does not allow its Olive Brook, Country Cellars and Carnival brands to be rated sighted by Platter while quite recently Dana Buys from Vrede en Lust threw the circus out of town. And there are many others like Aaldering and Deetlefs who have no confidence in luvvies looking at labels.
That said, there was surely something wrong this year with three Pinot Noirs getting high fives (two 2010 babies, barely out of nappies) while not a single Pinotage, Sémillon, [fill in your favourite brand here] got a mention. Isn’t it amazing how brands which do not enter competitions do so very well in Platter? Smells fishy to this Piscean.
judges' competence questioned
Thanks to Carrie Adams for e-mailing Angela Lloyd’s list of Top SA Wines – alas, I’ve given up reading Gripe, so had missed the original unveiling. Great minds think alike as Carrie had suggested she and I compile such a list for Classic FM with the novel feature that we’d buy the bottles. How about that – no ripping off producers, no special show barrels/bottlings. But Angela and her gang of nine beat us to the draw. Well, sort of, as they did not actually blind taste the wines they nominated or bother with vintages.
Juliet Cullinan and Carrie Adams
While entrepreneurs of the blogosphere ponder how to monetize their activities, I’ve decided to keep my head down and fix the things I find broken. In the case of wine on the web, it’s a desperate lack of content caused by everyone aggregating everyone else’s opinion. The result is a gejaag na wind as farmers in the Swartland say. It’s the Idiot Wind Bob Dylan sang about that had 100 bloggers posting the same inappropriate tasting note on a jolly 2010 Sauvignon Blanc called Wishbone from Oak Valley after a well protected piss-up at Mzoli’s in December. Host Anthony Rawbone-Viljoen obviously got the short end of the chicken’s wishbone on this one.
Hein Koegelenberg and a La Tour 1945
