Hi 23C° Low 5C° | 
Pendock Uncorked
17 hours, 8 minutes ago
The Social
1 day, 14 hours ago
Minor Matters
2 days, 1 hour ago
The Frock Report
2 days, 13 hours agoView all Times LIVE Blogs
OK, so SAB-Miller and their Castle Lager are a bunch of Charlie’s with their Charles Glass appreciation society. Well Distell also have a Charlie in the closet. William Charles Winshaw (in the frame below), who founded the company and invented Chateau Libertas, a red blend for wine drinkers (as opposed to poseurs) that celebrated it’s 80th birthday yesterday, in fine style, at the Big Easy eatery in Dorp Street, Stellenbosch.
On a 6am BA flight to Cape Town to wish an icon “happy birthday.”. For Chateau Libertas turns 80 and proud offspring Distell are holding the birthday party at The Big Easy in Stellenbosch, former home of Charles Winshaw, the American medical doctor who founded the company.
I’m looking forward to tasting the 1940 vintage and wonder in WOSA have been invited for their offices are just across the road and they sure love to party with R1 million budgeted for the Cape Wine 2012 launch do. After the recent insults tossed at SA farmers by CEO Su Birch, WOSA can look forward to a warm reception.
Driving down to Inchanga yesterday to fetch two dozen Simon Stone paintings to photograph for a monograph Smac Gallery are planning on this master of colour, we passed the wrecks of two burnt out lorries and their containers. The nameless bureaucrats who destroyed the SA railways to such an extent that national roads are now tarmac railways with motor cars playing dodgem with these high speed goliaths, have a lot to answer for. Arriving in Cato Ridge, we received the sad news that Remgro CEO Thys Visser was killed in a head-on collision on the N1 outside Rawsonville; a Princess Diana moment. How is it possible that the CEO of one of SA’s largest industrial concerns is killed in a car or a Princess dies in a tunnel in Paris?
“Battle looms over shock move to ban liquor ads” screams the headline in Business Day this morning. But the big problem for a Department of Health trying to “totally prohibit the advertising and promotion of alcoholic products” is the internet. Will the SA government build a firewall in the same way the Chinese government stops its citizens from searching for news of playboy princeling Bo GuaGua? Or pass a law like the King of Swaziland who forbade his citizens from insulting him on their blogs and via Twitter? The digital cat is out of the bag and liquor ad spend will migrate online faster that you can say Buitenverwachting.
The accident prone Spanish King Juan-Carlos (he killed his brother in a “shooting accident” while still a teenager) and his ill-fated Elephant hunt has handed Amarula a right royal marketing opportunity. The $2000-a-day great white hunter with a perm Jeff Rann (show below with the King) is quoted by The Guardian “You have to manage the world’s animal populations, to their betterment. We are trying to improve their habitat.” So are Amarula parent Distell, who have shelled out over R4 million to SA researchers to study Elephant overcrowding – or population dynamics in ecologyspeak. Amarula has so far managed to keep a clumsy Spanish monarch out of it.
So the pyramid scheme that owns 29% of Distell, the largest liquor corporate in SA by far, is to be semi-dismantled in the semi-Egyptian style. Holders of JSE listed CapeVin International (CVI) are to be offered 21 shares in unlisted CapeVin Holdings (CVH) which already owns 51% of CVI. CVH will then be listed on the JSE. The deal is confusing, not least as the second page of the SENS announcement preceded the first and was obviously compiled by a dyslexic merchant banker with CHV popping up in clause 6.1. Come on Chris (CVI chairman Otto), does anyone read these releases before they hit return on the keyboard?
Last week I was sipping a glass of Château Malartic-Lagravière Red 2009 at the only authentic brasserie left in Bordeaux - Le Noailles in the Allées de Tourny, a few hundred metres from the Grand Theatre. An artist friend reports “it is a shadow of its former self but still has linen aproned waiters with moustaches, but the last time I was there they didn’t even have chicken on the menu!”
Fascinating story on the R160 billion/year luxury Swiss watch export market by Michael Skapinker in the Financial Times last week. How ironic that the main ingredients of those luxury watches – gold and diamonds – do not naturally occur in Switzerland. Yet most of the profits are made by the gnomes of Geneva and their shareholders, while sick African miners are left to sue for healthcare benefits after generations spent mining those very commodities.
Fascinating profile of Pierre Pringuet in the Independent today. This interview with the boss of the world’s #2 liquor company Pernod Ricard, is sure to be required reading at Aan-de-Wagenweg in Stellenbosch. For if this is not an invitation to Distell to elope, then nothing is.
A new boss for Distell?
Leanne Jones, bubbly marketing maven for Amarula, will need a holiday after three days in the Kruger Park at Jock Safari. A lodge I thought was named after the Jockey brand of undergarments until I found excerpts of Jock of the Bushveld on my pillow, in lieu of a mint. For what a trip chaperoning the winners of an Amarula competition, this was. While the creamy marula fruited liqueur has an image of laid-back luxury and African drums around a camp fire – sort of Survivor without the luvvies – what we got were outtakes from the Bourne Identity. We even had ranger Lyle Gregg, better looking than Matt Damon even, showing off one of the Small Five, below.
Action Man Lyle
