Hi 22C° Low 6C° | 
The Wheel Deal
7 hours, 15 minutes ago
Pendock Uncorked
12 hours, 6 minutes ago
GabiVille
5 days, 11 hours ago
The Wanderer
1 week agoView all Times LIVE Blogs
A curious comment from Tim Atkin, wine writer and blogger, quoted in OLN as he picked up an award from Wine Intelligence. WI seems to be a marketing/PR company that recently gave one to embattled WOSA CEO Su Birch (cynics may wish to count how many Wine Intelligencers crack a freebee to Cape Wine 2012 as Su has long used WOSA largesse to market her own career). “Wine journalism is under threat from bloggers and declining interest in wine.”
The news that Nicky Oppenheimer has cashed in his De Beers chips to the tune of $5.1 billion, could be good news for SA wine. For Nicky told Bloomberg “the family will invest the bulk of the proceeds from the De Beers deal in Africa” with Tana Africa Capital, which focuses mainly on consumer and agricultural businesses, the obvious vehicle.
Brilliant story from David Gelles on the increasingly blurred divide between content and commerce in today’s Weekend Financial Times which goes some way to assuaging the double whammy of the cover price rising 8% to R40 (so much for the strong rand) and the absence of agony uncle Sir David Tang in the iconic pink pages. Perhaps he was too busy with royal wedding duties!
Sir David and the grandmother of yesterday's groom
Pondering what a sale of Vergelegen by Anglo American would mean to SA wine, I came across a story I wrote on the disposal of Boschendal back in 2004, which for reasons long forgotten, never saw the light of day.
A lot of H2O has flown into the Skuifraamdam since then: Julius Malema has replaced Lungu Ncwana as the head of the ANC Youth League, Mike Spicer (who co-ordinated the sale) has departed 44 Main Street, as has his boss Tony Traher and of course Brett Kebble is no longer around.
Reading about some of the bizarre sharks this feeding frenzy attracted to the quiet Franschhoek Valley, I realized the Boschendal disposal encapsulates many features of the BEE/transformation processes in SA wine being played out in the boardroom of KWV and elsewhere.
First Prize
