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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.
Today’s Cape Times offers Nederburg Baronne for R35 a bottle at branches of Picardi-Rebel. Yet in the Presidential Suite on the 16th floor of the Taj Hotel in Wale Street (Angela Merkel’s overnight bag still in the 270° glass bathroom) this evening two of the finest wines in SA were poured for a Cape Town media crew that included the new wine scribe for GQ magazine, Pieter Smedy and Thuli Gogela, the hot new indigenous food blogger.
Pieter Smedy and Razvan Macici
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
At first I thought it was a Distell allergy thing that saw the pips from the Grape communal blog AWOL from the Nederburg Auction two weeks ago. Not a bowtie in sight; no Mr. Min aerosols; no sparkling gnashers and gnarly toes and even the Queen of Woolies Takeaways was absent. But the great disappearing trick was repeated today at the CWG Auction with not a pip in sight and the only Platter potentate I saw a sober and soberly dressed Christian Eedes, looking more like a Nedbank Brackenfell branch manager than a former enfant terrible of SA wine writing. O tempora! O mores!
CWG Auction this morning - a shortage of pips
When did Christian Eedes cease being an enfant terrible of SA wine writing and join the establishment? Perhaps when Harry Haddon and his car were evicted at dawn from Kloovenburg for squatting during the Swartland Revolution. Or when David Cope released the Klein Constantia Sumo wrestler video that resulted in the farm being sold to a bouncing Czech cyclist. An industry like SA wine can support only so many enfants terrible at one time.
The final September edition of WINE magazine presents six future legends: august Adi Badenhorst, handsome Howard Booysen, ravishing Rosa Kruger, magnificent Miles Mossop, elegant Eben Sadie and dashing Duncan Savage except only Howie is a true future legend. The others arrived ages ago, as is clear from the stellar prices they demand for their drops and glamorous “farmer” Rosa supplies the viticultrual prowess that polishes the pinnacle of SA pricey wine.
David Sadie and Donovan Rall
Media guru Emile Joubert compares the latest Shoprite/Checkers TV advert featuring wine impresario Michael Fridjhon to that supermarket’s embracing of Afrikaans cultural chiskop Nataniël to promote boerewors. Matching food and wine could find them both around the braai, which could have serious comedic potential.
Happy 40th birthday for yesterday, Christian Eedes, former enfant terrible of SA wine writing, now graduated to adulte terrible. As a present, the debate you predicted on the lack of a gold medal for Chenin Blanc at the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show last week. Sorry it’s not wrapped!
That there was no Old Mutual golden Chenin is simple: only 48 wines were submitted – probably on account of the embarrassing negative correlation between the show owner and a high profile OM taster at the Chenin Challenge earlier this year, highlighted in postings passim. But if you’re looking for a gold medal Chenin, try the Oldenburg 2010 which won gold at the International Wine Challenge in London today – I know I did.
Oldenburg winemaker Simon Thompson, reprising the role of Eddie Murphy in The Golden Child
The Bilton, a 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon, was launched on the day a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami took out northern Japan. The effect on the SA wine scene was not nearly as dramatic with the many luvvies, terroir tourists and self promoters seemingly not invited to the launch, stamping their tiny feet in impotent fury.
But then there were only 500 bottles of the stuff made and it does retail for R3000 a pop. One passed-over pundit took his hissy fit into the columns of the Mail & Guardian, a newspaper which takes lifestyle issues increasingly seriously, and trashed the wine untasted in probably the worst piece of “wine writing” in SA this year and a challenge to the new ethical code at the M&G.
The Bilton came up in conversation at lunch at KWV yesterday and Cathy Marston, winsome wine educator without the ego, who has tasted it, said she liked it, calling it “Amarone in style.” Of course trashing the wine (untasted) for its 500% new wood is deeply hypocritical as many icons like Grange Hermitage are aided by the addition of powdered tannin sourced from chestnuts and goodness knows how many barrel equivalents of tannin that equates to, while more than one local big name swears by liquid tannin extracted from oak staves. Hats off to Bilton and their Big Five, say I.
Christian Eedes
How much? R69;
Where? From David Wibberley 0721172147;
Why? This brand is called Cardinal Sin and the joke works on so many levels: for starters, there was a Cardinal Sin, the charismatic Jaime Sin, archbishop of Manila who helped topple Ferdinand Marcos and his shoe collecting wife Imelda. Sin is the kind of surname that makes your career choices for you.
Matt Battle
Thank heavens the smells of sex do not rise, like hot air, or this evening’s Great Domaines Burgundy tasting would have been more of an olfactory challenge than it already was. For Christian Eedes, former editor of WINE magazine, warned earlier this week that “good Pinot should smell like vagina (and good Chardonnay of semen)” and we were scheduled to taste some of the finest Burgundies, white and red, all from vintage 2007, all premier crus.
Derek Kilpin presents a Great Domaines tasting @ French Toast
