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Is SA wine serious about China? The list of 27 exhibitors at next week’s VinExpo in Hong Kong – or Hong Kok as my dyslexic friend Pinky calls it (with Bang Kong presumably the capital of Thailand) concentrates very much on terroir by truck wines. Commercial wines sold mainly on price.
Where are the terroir treasures, the Kanonkops, Vergelegens and Meerlusts? Not a single one of the controversial UCT Top Twenty wineries are attending, although UCT’s self-appointed professor of wine, Tim James, has at last done the decent thing and signed up for a non-UCT e-mail with which to communicate with the industry. Perhaps the Platter guide will send Professor Tim east to present this year’s 5* stunners in the next chapter of the unseemly commercial luv-in between the guide and WOSA, the exporters’ mouthpiece.
The Sanhedrin of SA wine expanded by 15 last night as the Commanderie de Bordeaux intronized the latest batch of Bordeaux worshippers at a glittering function at De Grendel. Sir David Graaff and De Grendel winemaker Chas Hopkins had a home team advantage and their Koetshuis CWG was nailed at the Bordeaux-style tasting afterwards by Arthur McWilliam Smith whose laser-like taste buds detected the serious Sémillon component, as did mining financier Gerard Holden who was amused to be addressed in the Afrikaans fashion: Gheritt rather than Jerard. He flew down to Cape Town from London yesterday, especially to join in.
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
Confused terroir message from the makers of Karoo mineral water at lunch today in Stellenbosch. The tagline “origin ~ Paarl” on the front of the bottle contradicts the brand name. But then naming a mineral water after the great thirstland at the red heart of SA is a stretch, anyway. Paarl plonk of-te-not, it certainly washed down the veal sweatbreads this lunchtime at Café Dijon in sweltering Oak City, ably assisted by a 2011 Simonsig Chenin Blanc that was well priced at R70.
The design brain behind the Swartland Revolution, Anton Espost, seems to have embraced a new symbology for this year’s Food|Wine|Design Fair that opened on the roof of the Hyde Park Corner Shopping Centre last night – Ashanti Kente cloth (see below). Which makes a lot of sense as the old Soviet imagery was starting to look very Tashkent.
New African branding for the Swartland
A wonderful diary entry in The Spectator from press baron Evgeny Lebedev, owner of The Independent, The London Evening Standard and son of oligarch Alexander who gave Moscow property developer Sergei Polonsky a bunch of fives on Russian prime time TV last month.
“At the weekend, in the company of my co-owners Ian McKellen and Sean Matthias, I visited a new venture of mine — a 16th-century public house called The Grapes on Narrow Street, next to the Thames. It was built by Huguenots, and appears in Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend. We had hoped to see Gandalf’s celebrated colourful smoke rings, but the smoking ban denied us. Instead he pulled his first pint — a privilege Tolkien never allowed him in Middle Earth. This provided much amusement for the regulars.”
The Hyatt in Rosebank, Johannesburg, was the venue of Meridian Wine Merchants’ annual tasting last Monday evening. Meridian has a spectacular portfolio of exquisite brands in the wine trade with glistening names like Rust en Vrede, Meerlust and Rupert & Rothschild being amongst them. As a cherry on top they have 3 Grand Marque champagne for sale, namely Pommery, Barons De Rothschild and most delicately Billecart-Salmon, many connoisseur’s favourite.
Portuguese wine guru Aníbal Coutinho and I have a running joke. Every time we hit a quintessential Portuguese wine producer/village/appellation on our annual tasting trips around the land of presunto and octopus rice, it becomes “the St. Émilion of Portuguese Wine.” There are several so far: Santar, Estremoz, Baccalhôa… The back of Hall B at last weekend’s Stellenbosch Wine Festival – which for a while was billed as the 10th when it wasn’t – convinced me that the Helderberg is the St. Émillion of SA.
For starters, the earnest young pourers in their buttoned down preppy shirts from Rust en Vrede and Ernie Els have a smart self-confidence and bushy tailed enthusiasm that goes a long way to justifying the prices asked, which are not cheap. But what wines: the Rust en Vrede 2008 red blend narrowly beat the Meerlust Rubicon 2007 and Kanonkop Paul Sauer 2008 as Red of Show in my humble opinion – but then it does contain Shiraz, which is outrageously promiscuous when young. Perhaps the others will be more attractive with some bottle age, so it looks like I’ll have to buy all three. Forget about using terroir to sell wine – testosterone is so much more effective.
Ernie's rugby white at RG's Kebab Mahal in Sea Point
Debra Meiburg is no stranger to SA wine. For starters, she’s distant family of Hannes Myburgh of Meerlust fame, even if her Californian branch of the family obviously came second in the spelling bee. She’s been to SA seven times and even competes in the Cape Argus, although with a dodgy ankle and Klein Constantia now snapped up by two other Argus cyclists, let’s hope she’ll be a competitor for many future vintages as she’s a big fan of SA wine.
Debra and Neil do lunch
Cape of Good Hope is a new brand from Anthonij Rupert Wines in Franschhoek. The range consists of a “Chenin blanc and Semillon from old vines while the Pinotage is from an irreplaceable block of unirrigated bushvines atop the Paardeberg. There is a Chardonnay from Elandskloof in Villiersdorp, Merlot from a tiny block on Parel Vallei Farmstead and Rhône red blends from special slate soils on our Riebeeksrivier farm to come.” The common denominator being the wines were made from the fruit of “almost 70 blocks of vines which are older than 40 years, with a few of them even older than 100 years.”
