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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
It’s just as well that Pinot Noir is “not a wine for the masses” as Paul Cluver IV noted at the launch lunch of the second vintage (2007) of his Seven Flags yesterday. ‘Cos he has only 240 dozen and Alan Pick (of Butcher’s Shop & Grill fame) bought 10. Not bad for a man who used to claim that the main advantage of the cultivar is that you can’t tell if the bottle is corked or not.
But then Alan is going through more changes than St. Paul on a round-the-world ticket, with Eben Sadie his new favourite winemaker. He’s even making the pilgrimage out to Priorat to track Eben down to his terroir. Strange bedfellows perhaps, but then as Al says “Eben has a genius for making wine. I have a genius for making money.”
