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Now that national airline SAA (which costs SA taxpayers billions to keep aloft) has abandoned Cape Town, the DA-hub, its left to KLM to provide daily direct flights from Amsterdam. The clock has been turned back 360 years to the days when the VOC, forerunners to KLM, sent Flying Dutchmen to the Cape. Heck, the airline has even taken ownership of the phrase Flying Dutchman.
Chile, the most effective wine competitor to SA, has stolen a march on the SA industry in economy class with the only wines available a Chardonnay/Sauvignon Blanc 2011 and a Cabernet/Merlot 2011 from Terra Andina, shown below near the end of yesterday’s chock-a-block flight from Schiphol.
How retro is this KLM plane at Schiphol, this afternoon, below? Time for SAA to bring back the orange flying springbok, methinks.
A lesson for Stellenbosch who sold out to the Italianate bling of Summer Place in Hyde Park this week as showcase for their wines in Gauteng. The business class lounge at Schiphol this morning boasted an eg cheese-maker (shown below).
Vincent Lignac, from Château Guadet, is the international judge at this year’s Diners Club Winemaker of the Year Competition which makes sense, as the category is Bordeaux-style blends and Vincent makes a Grand Cru Real McCoy from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. He arrived at the Grande Roche at 10pm last night courtesy of KLM with his suitcase quietly seeping 1962 Guadet which retails at €350 a bottle. “I’ve travelled all around the world and this is the first time a bottle broke. I came back from the USA with 19 bottles and no problem.” Another casualty of airlines banning liquids in hand-luggage.
Vincent, Carrie Adams and Duimpie Bayly
The reason for the collapse of SA wine exports, as any WOSA apparatchik will tell you, is the strength of the rand against the Pound/Euro/Dollar/Zloty (chose an appropriate currency). Yet the flipside of this currency, cheap wine imports, is nowhere to be found. Invited to the Air France/KLM Salon Privée last night to reward their frequent flyers and to announce the launch of a direct Cape Town/Paris flight in November (although admittedly a bit Irish to hold it a Morrell’s marvelous boutique hotel in Northcliff) I posed this question to Daniel Lorson “a top Champagne executive” flown-in by AF/KLM “to see for himself what SA and Africa can mean to the Champagne industry in terms of growth and expansion.”
Shaun Anderson and Daniel Lorson
