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One reason deadtree newspaper circulation is declining faster than the BP share price was revealed when I enquired why my copy of the Weekend Financial Times is delivered to a Cape Town city centre address on a Sunday when it is on sale in Exclusive Books on a Saturday morning and is available for free on the internet.
“Hi Pandock
Please note that in Cape Town, Durban and PE all the FT delivery is only done on Sunday together with the Sunday Times. For missed copies I will request credit to be passed. Please note that the weekend FT covers both Saturday and Sunday” was the reply from FT Renewals & Sales.
Of course if I’d known these conditions, I’d never have signed up for a deadtree, relying rather on essentially free electrons that travel at 299 792Km/sec, even in Cape Town.
Still I am happy with my subscription to the deadtree Spectator. How else would I have read Simon Hoggart’s wonderful tasting note for Chris Hellinger’s superlative Cape Chamonix 2007 Rouge. “A Bordeaux blend with a splash of Malbec to give it weight. Think of top-of-the-range Hardy’s and Jacob’s Creek, reduce the price while improving the flavour, and you’re getting a notion of how delicious this is. And affordable.” Of course, I could have read it for free on the internet.
With hindsight, singing along with Bananarama to Love in the First Degree “I’m guilty, guilty as a girl can be” was perhaps not the wisest move, stopped at last night’s police roadblock on the N2 after a Constantia Glen winemaker’s dinner at the Vineyard Hotel. Mr. Plod poked his nose in through the window, sniffing for evidence of alcohol indulgence, just as one of the Brussel Griffons farted. “Drive on,” spluttered SAP’s finest and we made Greyton just before midnight.
Greyton in Grey this morning
Last night the Good Value Guru road trip around Portugal rolled into the Douro and we stayed with João Nicolau de Almeida on the Ramos Pinta Quinta. “Thank you so much for your story in the Sunday Times,” said J-N, “Michael Crossley sent me a copy.”
João Nicolau de Almeida on Ramos Pinto on Sunday night
Lunch with Carlen Groenewald, marketing maven of Distell’s wildly successful Two Oceans brand. Carlen had been pogoing to the Parlotones at De Aria in Durbanville on the weekend. What is it about Pampoenkraal that it’s become the Woodstock of the Western Cape? – Die Antwoord last weekend, the Parlotones this. Is it speed in the racy Sauvignon Blanc? Someone should tell us or the whole country will soon be bopping, given the amount of Durbanville Sauvignon that gets exported to other appellations, like the Constantia Valley.
The Paroltones remain loyal to their Woolies brand Big Mistake, selling it as blush slushpuppies mixed with either cranberries or pomegranates (after a couple, Carlen was confused). When Die Antwoord launch their own wine brand, what bets on Red Bull or Coke as mixer? Lunch at Portofino with the “rude but not crude” restaurateur Cormac Keane (wearing Alexander McQueen bumsters, presumably as a sign of mourning) was up to the usual standards but we did miss the Parma Ham in the antipasto starter (extra salt squid instead). At least he didn’t try and parma-off an ersatz equivalent as two local Sea Point foodies have alleged. Maybe Cormac was getting his own back for the photo the Sunday Times ran with the Q&A on Sunday. “I don’t want to look like an idiot, so use the one I’m sending and please give a photo credit to JM Lederman.”
Cormac by JM Lederman
SA lost one of the pioneers of supermarket wine last week, Pinkie Tremble, six weeks short of 90. Today Tops at Spar is the largest liquor chain in the country and Pinkie’s part in this success through pioneering training courses for staff and franchisees plus her wine newsletter, cannot be underestimated. I met Pinkie at the Nederburg Auction several years ago and I remember her as a larger than life Barbara Cartlandesque character in bright colours, always laughing. We talked about wine hackery and circulation problems with the Sunday Times Lifestyle supplement. But it is only now, after reading Jenny McQueen’s moving obituary, that I wish I’d quizzed her more. Anyone who buys a deconsecrated synagogue in the middle of the Karoo from the prize money from a radio quiz show called 100 000 To Go on Judy Garland is my kind of wine writer.
Pinkie Tremble
A Guala Closure may sound like keyhole surgery performed on the grossly obese to shrink their stomachs with rubber bands or a theorem from topology. Which must be the reason they’re sponsoring next week’s WINE magazine Chenin Challenge. For this Guala Closure is actually an Italian screw cap manufacturer, making over five billion a year – nearly one for everyone on the planet.
The cheeky chappie wine guru of the UK Sunday Express, Jamie Goode (like fellow Londoner Jamie Oliver, but with skinnier lips) doesn’t think much of Pinotage and the latest coffee/mocha style he calls “an absurdity. Honestly.” His opinion, while perhaps the most extreme, is shared by other high profile pundits in the UK.
Diemersfontein @ WineX
Pendock gets hit for a six by Sunday Express wine guru Jamie Goode in a bad tempered blog posting yesterday. Reacting to my South African perspective on the demise of the Wall Street Journal wine column of Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher last year, he ignores the argument and seeks to defend the indefensible, some bigoted comments he made on Pinotage. Which he then reinforces with yet more uninformed comments: “It’s very difficult to make world class Pinotage” (rubbish, last year’s International Trophy for Top Red Single Varietal over £10 at the Decanter World Wine Awards was trousered by Kaapzicht Steytler Pinotage 2006) and “Pinotage is not the USP [unique selling proposition] he claims it to be” (more rubbish, the operative adjective here is “unique”, of course there are many other strong suits).
Franschhoek, “a sunny place for shady people” to quote Somerset Maugham on Monaco (the domicile of one of Franschhoek’s erstwhile shady specialists Count Rocky Agusta) was victim of a characteristically sloppy slander on the Grape part-time blog last week. I polled a few F’Hoek personalities but there was no energy for a counterattack, the Hoekers happy to continue surfing in Hermanus or whatever it is people do there that causes traffic backups all the way to Onrus. Besides, heavyweights like veteran foodie Myrna Robins pulled in to correct some of the typical economies of truth. But when Dana Buys of Vrede en Lust fame started his defense of his appellation with a drive-by shooting of SA wine writers “Seems like most wine journo’s only write nice things about the Swartland and Paardeberg these days” my mouse rushed to his pad and started tweeting.
Storm in Franschhoek
You can see why her brother Pik Botha was the world’s longest serving foreign minister for a while back in the eighties. When I e-mailed with news of her starring role in Nicky Haslam’s terrific autobiography, Redeeming Features (Jonathan Cape, 2009) the reply from Katinka van Niekerk was the soul of diplomacy.
Nicky’s friend on page 217 “was charm personified, even after several after-dinner drinks called Katinkas, two parts vodka to one part apricot brandy.” To which Katinka replied “came back from KwaZulu-Natal late last night and shrieked with laughter when I saw your mail. It’s hilarious, especially with the heading looming over all details: Redeeming Features. Hilarious. Thank you so much for sending me the recipe! Oh, that after-dinner drink would suit me fine. In future that is what I am going to offer my guests; starting on 24 December 2009. I’m going to change the apricot part to witblitz, though. So, off to Worcester I will go to do my shopping!”
Katinka van Niekerk
