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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 Nederburg has made two special Masterchef wines for Woolies: an 90:10 red blend of Grenache and Carignan and a 60:40 blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay from the 2010 and 2011 vintages respectively, brings together two of the nicest guys in SA wine: Nederburg cellarmaster Razvan Macici and Woolies wine consultant Allan Mullins. Why did Nederburg do it? Getting four listings on Woolies facings for their Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot might have had something to do with it.
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
When will we see our first corporate Wine Ambassador, the face of a brand? Meerlust already has proprietor Hannes Myburgh and Rust en Vrede is blessed with Jean Engelbrecht. But what’s missing is the face of Two Oceans (someone with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde on their CV) and Obikwa (the late Henry Cele who was such a great Shaka, would have been perfect) while that Farmer Brown chicken fancier would do great as the visage of Roodeberg. After all, ambassadors sell whisky, as the story below, rejected by a glossy lifestyle magazine in November, attempted to say. They’d commissioned a Q&A and wanted the formula neatly reproduced.
The annual Whisky Live Festival has more ambassadors than the United Nations. But then it is the largest whisky festival on the planet. Which may seem incredible, until you are told that South Africa is the 7th largest market for Scotch in the world by value, ahead of Germany and breathing down the neck of South Korea.
With more brands on bottle store facings from Scotland’s 100+ distilleries than member countries of the United Nations, it makes sense for producers to appoint ambassadors to market their product. Ewan Gunn has landed the job of every whisky wonk’s dream: brand ambassador for Diageo, the largest whisky producer of them all and the face of Johnnie Walker, the top-selling brand of blended whiskies.
Ewan Gunn at Whisky Live
WOSA attempts to defend the decision to ban the public from the last day of three day Cape Wine 2012 on their website. The claim is made that “we are not legally able to spend our money on marketing to local consumers” so how do they explain marketing and selling their controversial braii boek in SA? This is a fig leaf WOSA are draping over a stupid decision. It’s King Canute time in Dorp Street as WOSA ignores common sense.
Dominic Ntsele, the eminence behind the Classic FM radio station, has come up with a novel circulation boosting strategy for his glossy new magazine Classic Wine. Hire everyone likely to buy the publication as writers and you start with an impressive circulation list. If I’d have had R60 handy this morning, he’d have sold me a copy too. But alas I had only R40 for the Weekend Financial Times (available in Johannesburg the day before it reaches Cape Town) and Exclusives didn’t have any copies. Or perhaps there is no Christmas weekend edition of the Pink One?
Thank heavens it was not shrink wrapped like the old WINE magazine, so I could indulge in a bit of browsing. I’d already read huge tracts sent to me by featured producers in PDF attachments to their e-mails. So is it a winner?
The length of stories and their tight focus (2000 words on a single Sauvignon Blanc?) will rule most casual readers hors de combat, leaving the field to anoraques and the trade. Yet the ads are not wine specific and look more like the expensive lifestyle kind you find in Wanted or GQ.
The two month pause between editions will rule out the reader repartee you find in weekly magazines like The Spectator and New Statesman. But I suspect the real reason for the magazine is as a platform for its tasting panels, with a wine club part of the brand extension of Classic FM. This is essentially the Colin Collard Wine of the Month model which provides the industry with the excellent Good Taste magazine.
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
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
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.
