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While Greece, the birthplace of democracy, is looking increasingly like becoming the graveyard of capitalism, hard pressed Greek consumers can console themselves with having the best rosé and sweet wines in the world as the results from the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, judged earlier this month, confirm:
The smell of rotting snoek is making the UCT Top 20 Wineries poll more fragrant than the pier at Kalk Bay. White, lower middle-class, upper middle-aged voters are scurrying to post their own private Top 20 lists on the net to distance themselves from the debacle. Those revealed to date on the Grape communal blog all contain Nederburg, Platter Winery of the Year in 2011 that couldn’t make the Top 20 this. Mr. Min (so presumably Ma Nolte too) and even self-appointed pollster Tim James all claim to have voted for Nederburg, so perhaps the auditors could comment on the curious omission from the final list or were there election monitors who can attest to the veracity of the poll. Or was it all a scam? Elections are never easy in Africa!
Tallying the vote
While we wait for Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine: How Creativity Works (Canongate Books 2012) to be discounted by Abebooks.com, the bibliophile’s version of Johan Wegner’s GetWine vinous remainderer, some teasing extracts appeared in The Guardian last week. In particular, I was seized by the analogy of how the left and right brain reproduces a house.
SA wine needs more right-brain tasters
A bear hug from MasterChefSA judge Pete Goffe-Wood on Greenmarket Square on Thursday and a quick discussion about the series. I was initially unsure whether to dodge a Glasgow kiss from Pete after my comments on Tuesday’s braai program but chef, the model of decorum, admitted “we get better as the show progresses.”
Chef Pete Goffe-Wood and UCT voter Mike Bamfield-Duggan, a profusion of "-"s
This week’s competition is to identify the truly spectacular red blend called DNA, shown below. It has nothing to do with DNA SA the ill-fated “toolkit for marketers that represents WOSA’s thinking on how we should present Brand Wine South Africa, and the vocabulary we should use to project an image of quality” launched in 2009 just as SA wine exports blew up.
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.
Last Tuesday’s tasting at De Grendel, led by CWG lumninary Charles Hopkins, was probably the first ever in which the chemical analysis charges exceeded the price of the wines. Occasioned by the observation that UK wine hacks can identify SA reds blind on their high IBMP content, the workshop attracted most of the Platter planetarium and a few outsiders like yours truly, Mr. Min and even the elusive bald lady Ma Nolte was there.
The future of SA fine wine is unfolding way down south, at Elim, where a quartet of new producers: Strandveld Vineyards, Zoetendal, Black Oystercatcher and The Berrio are making explosive wines to bring tears to the cynical eyes of this Swartland vineyard owner. Wine that will fire an explosive harpoon into the pretentions of many a Swartland Revolutionary, like the one that did for the whale whose jaw bone marks the entrance to the Strandveld cellar. The counter revolution has begun and the gay washing on the strandveld line (below) will soon be replaced by the camouflage of sumcomandante Carrie Adams and her crew as they limber up for a counter attack on some sitting duck wine styles.
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 spittoon is foaming over the identity of the author of The SA Pinotage Guide “a new publication on Pinotage, its pioneers and history, intrinsics of the grape, the major producers and Pinotage personalities.” It’s not Peter May, author of PINOTAGE: Behind the Legends of South Africa’s Own Wine and since food is not mentioned in the title or blurb, its unlikely to be Guido Francque, the Belgian chef with a bee in his bonnet for the culitivar. Commissioned by the Pinotage Association, the book will be released in mid-January at Diemersfontein, an estate which changed the direction of Pinotage forever with its coffee/mocha variant. Peter will be in SA at the time, so let’s hope someone remembers to invite him!
Donkiesbaai Steen fermentor "Space Ball"
