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Exports of packaged and bulk wine to the Netherlands were down 500 000 litres last year but WOSA, Wines of SA, the exporters’ mouthpiece, has come up with a cunning cultural plan to reverse the decline. By sponsoring an Afrikaans Kunstefees (arts festival) in Amsterdam in June featuring well known tipplers Breyten Breytenbach, Gert Vlok Nel and Chris Chameleon, WOSA hopes to boost SA wine sales.
Chris Chameleon to front SA wine in Amsterdam
Isn’t it typical. No sooner does BA choose Cape Town as its Top Destination for 2010 than the airline hits severe turbulence brought on by striking trolley dollies. Perhaps Willy Walsh should follow his own advice to punters and put his cabin crew up in the Mother City rather than Somerset West. Being home to two Masters of Wine (in the case of Remington Norman for the sunny season) hardly outweighs the charms of Table Mountain.
Famous Somerset West MW Remington Norman
Christopher Hope, director of the Franschhoek Literary Festival, invited some local wine hacks to “submit the best piece of writing you published in 2008 on any wine-related topic, for the Franschhoek Literary Festival’s SA Wine Writers Award” last month. Of course by requiring the entry have been published, for dead-tree denizens this would include the attentions of “pencil people”: editors, sub-editors, designers, lay-out etc. which might markedly affect the final result.
As an example, I’m posting a link to a story on Christopher which appeared in last Sunday’s Sunday Times along with the original copy, to make the point.
The battle for the soul of SA wine between Bacchus and Mammon rages on, but the struggle for the tongue looks increasingly likely to be won by bloggers, with deadtree media in retreat on all fronts. Of course the major problem with blogs is how to make them pay, as the deadtree kolumnist reduced from a weekly slot to a monthly mention soon found out.
Which makes the position adopted by the recently resuscitated communal blog Grape of “shouldn’t, and as a rule doesn’t, carry any advertisements even ones opportunistically pretending not to be.”
