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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?
The news that HCI recently bought another 688 shares in KWV at R8.50 each – which triggered a mandatory offer to shareholders to buy everyone out at that price – comes as no surprise. The price is a far cry from the R11.80 HCI paid to Jannie Mouton’s Zeder for the initial investment earlier this year but well above the R7 the security was trading for in September.
Farmers must be kicking themselves for not grabbing the offer from Pioneer Foods with both hands, but can congratulate themselves on remaining proud owners of one of Irma Stern’s best paintings. The current offer values 100 shares at roughly the retail price of four bottles of the flagship Roodeberg named after its inventor, Dr. Charles Niehaus. A 2010 blend of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, Charlie is richly fruited and densely intense. But even more importantly, brings the KWV icon red kicking and screaming into the New World of accessible wine styles upon which the very future of the company depends.
Charlie Niehaus, a new old face of KWV quality
Mixed signals from Vindaba, the wine tourism conference scheduled to run in parallel with Cape Wine 2012 next September. WOSA media apparatchik André Morgenthal is quoted by the Whale Cottage blog as claiming that Vindaba will be a “stand-alone self-funded event, which will not be funded by WOSA” from their R25 million honey pot. But quite why a producer would pay R20K for a 2x2m stand at Vindaba when they already pay for a stand at Cape Wine 2012 is moot as there will be “free flow access” between the two exhibitions. Certainly a Vindaba presentation doing the rounds paints a different picture of WOSA’s involvement:
Shortly after we fired a cannon salvaged from the wreck of the VOC treasure ship Reigersdaal, a dinkum blast from the past, soft rain started to fall on the vineyards at De Wetshof. “Hy het ‘n wolk raak geskiet” (he hit a cloud) laughed winemaker Peter de Wet. Or perhaps it was the ghostly tears of widows back in the Jordaan; wives of the +130 sailors who died of scurvy after the ship was becalmed in the mid-Atlantic for 18 weeks. Which was the reason the ship stranded back in 1747. The survivors were too weak to save her from a black southeaster and so it lost its cargo of pieces of eight at Silverstroomstrand near the site of the present day Koeberg nuclear reactor. Hence the name of the beach, as streams of silver coins would be uncovered by storms.
Danie and Peter de Wet
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
The Swartland Winery stole the thunder from tomorrow’s Swartland Revolution when their Idelia 2009 Cape Blend was one of three winners of the inaugural Perold ABSA Cape Blend competition, announced at KWV in Paarl this evening. Together with Corlea Fourie from Bosman Family Vineyards in Wellington and William Wilkinson from Wildekrans in Bot River, Swartland winemaker Andries Blake will be heading for France on an ABSA sponsored winemaking tour next year. Each winning winemaker was also given an iPad to blog about their trip in real time.
Beyers Truter addresses Perold guests at KWV
It’s been an amazing week of women taking ownership of wine. It kicked off with 100 women choosing 100 wines in Cape Town with Clare Mack and then I met Libby Pietersen at the Soweto Wine Festival last night. As it says on her banner “as a black South African WOMAN I offer… Elegance, Style and a Truly Unique Taste.” Coming a week after SA wine farmers were tarred and feathered by Human Rights Watch and labeled as slave drivers, as MD of her own company, Libby is the contradiction that’s worth 1000 press releases from wine industry quangos. As was Chris Barron’s evisceration of the HRW report in the Sunday Times. The man is an expert in writing obituaries, which he did for the HRW report.
Libby does Soweto
KWV chairman Marcel Golding made a serious mistake when he “fired” CEO Thys Loubser last month. For Thys is the grandson of Maggie Laubser, one that trio of strong women (the other two are Irma Stern and Maude Sumner) who pretty much sum up SA decorative arts for the 20th century. KWV’s canniest investments and most valuable assets today are the art works accumulated over nine decades when their gray shoes were placed firmly on the neck of SA wine producers and consumers including some important works by Cecil Skotnes.
The Koue Bokkeveld is the new Ground Zero for quality Sauvignon Blanc as a tasting of Nederburg Sauvignons on offer at next month’s Nederburg Auction in Paarl confirms. Ceres is fast taking over from Durbanville as the primus inter pares appellation for the most popular single varietal white wine in SA as it introduces a broad spectrum minerality to the pineapple tropical fruit profile found in Durbanville.
The only cloud on the horizon is a lack of cloud. Recent unseasonally warm winter weather has Nederburg’s ad agency luvvies in a tizz as they wait, fur-lined anoraks at the ready, for a snow fall to snap black white winemaker Tariro Masayiti in a sub-arctic winter wonderland. Another problem is a name for the appellation as the wines are Western Cape at the minute, usually a synonym for the Paardeberg. The closest mountains are called the Witzenberg but alas, mother ship Distell already has a brand of that name.
It was standing room only last night in the Clover tent at the Stellenbosch Wine Festival as sandwich sage Emile Joubert made Elvis Presley peanut butter, bacon and banana butties. I was in attendance to slice gherkins for the Cuban pulled pork semi-bunny chows. Quizzed what wine to pour with the Elvis extravaganza, I offered Pinotage as iron banana is a popular style.
Emile Joubert, Demon Sarmie Sculptor
