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My take on wines with unusual labels, in the Sunday Times Food Weekly yesterday.
James Bond, the film franchise, turns fifty this year. In 2013, the fictional secret agent himself turns sixty. Which is all good marketing copy for another James. Former London currency trader James McKenzie has exchanged bucks for barrels and rates for racking and now makes a Mediterranean red blend called Scaramanga, in Wellington. Named after the baddie in the Man with the Golden Gun, the brand honours the farmer who grew the Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. He has a supernumerary nipple, just like Francisco Scaramanga in Ian Fleming’s book. Impressively obscure.
A still-born obscure brand
We’re labeling our Lemoenfontein white this week, so for our single marketing activity we thought we’d lunch at Bar Bar Black Sheep in Riebeek Kasteel and hope to bump into someone from “The Gouda Book Club, recognized by Moscow as the foremost credible body concerning the evaluation and assessment of fine wines between Porterville and Hermon” according to comrade Anton Espost (slogan in the ’97 elections “stem Espost en almal wen” (vote for Espost and put him on the gravy train).
Komrade Anton of the Gouda Book Klub
The Platter Five Star Stunners are out and Tim James, apologist for and associate editor of the Platter sighted wine guide claims an “overwhelming reflection of terroir on the labels of Platter five-star wines is in itself perhaps the most impressive achievement of all.”
Rubbish! – all it proves is that Platter pundits preferentially nominate terroir wines sighted. Sighted nomination sucks, especially when you have a couple of importers/retailers of Burgundy assessing SA Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, as at least one winemaker noted, ruefully.
Eben Sadie, punted by TJ as his pick for Platter Winemaker of the Year if they were to have one, makes a strong case for blends being necessary for complexity in SA wines. An observation which usually speaks against terroir as different varietals typically come from different sites unless you’re in the Douro, where everything grows in the same vineyard in merry confusion. And given the SA obsession with new wood, who’s terroir are we talking about anyway? Allier?
Donovan Rall proves the point with his 2008 vintage four way old barrel white blend of grapes from the Helderberg, Bottelary Hills and Paardeberg. His and the Dunstone Shiraz 2008 were the only two wines out of 41 to evoke any kind of surprise up here in Jozi. As one restaurateur commented “it’s now easier to get a Platter five star than a Veritas double gold.”
Donovan Rall
