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Keen golfer Tim Atkin, frequent visitor to Cape links as guest of SA wine producers, proposes golf as unlikely successor to soccer as symbol for racial integration in sports mad South Africa in the wake of the FIFA soccer World Cup. Writing in Off License News, Atkin tackles the thorny issue of empowerment in the local wine industry and holds up the failure of the Fundi project to train 2010 wine waiters (sommeliers having become a controversial term among those brandishing the taste-du-vin) in time for the World Cup as one example of how economic issues have slowed down transformation.
Christian Eedes waved a red flag at a whole herd of bulls on his blog yesterday by asking whether Christine Rudman, on the basis of nominating SIGHTED five of the 41 wines rated five stars in the current edition of the Platter sighted wine guide, is the best taster in SA.
Do these lovely ladies include the best wine taster in SA?
So, farewell then, AA Gill, as EJ Thribb (17½), Poet Laureate of Private Eye, might say. The great food critic, killed off (for me, at least) by the new internet charging policy of Rupert Murdoch. I’ll also miss the burnt rubber aromas of Jane MacQuitty, but the emanations from Tim Adkin, recently of that parish, not at all.
For in this idiot wind of lifestyle blogs, articles and features on the internet, this hurricane of hedonism, am I prepared to pay for content? Is anyone? A point I tried to make to blogger provocateur Christian Eedes on Thursday, as we thundered back from a slap-up lunch at Solms-Delta, in the farm school bus.
Thursday's Media Bus
What a luck! Both teams playing at Greenpoint Stadium tomorrow night made Tim Adkin’s Winning Wines for the World Cup Knockout in the Thunderer today. So I don’t need to follow his advice and try a 2009 De Lucca Tannat (juicy plum and black cherry) vs. a 2007 Côtes du Rhône Clos de Mont-Olivet (juicey [sic] and unoaked with cloves) as substitute for the beautiful game, as I will be at the match in person, thanks to two tickets from Spier.
The news that controversial UK wine commentator, Tim Atkin, is to judge the Franschhoek Wine Writers Competition, hit the SA wine spittoon last week with an eyebrow raising 8.8 on the open-ended Richter scale and triggered several tsunamis. For Atkin (or “Adkin”, as Franschhoek PRs joshingly – and perhaps more accurately – call him) does not have a very high opinion of SA wine writers. Writing in Wine & Spirit Magazine he called “SA domestic wine writers… parochial, barely qualified fans with typewriters” and noted “In the absence of a more robust domestic media, SA needs informed criticism from overseas.” Presumably from people like Mr. Adkin himself, who has time on his hands after being trimmed from The Observer newspaper.
Tim Adkin enjoys a good larf at the expense of parochial SA winewriters
Is Bizerka Bistro the best restaurant in Cape Town, and so, by extrapolation, the whole of SA? Certainly my oysters drenched in exotic dipping sauces followed by succulent lambs liver with a grape reduction would be hard to beat anywhere in the continent. To drink, an awesomely citrus Oude Denneboom Chenin Blanc 2009 from the Poor Vaarteberg (Voor Paardeberg for non-Americans) that was so good, Bizerka boss Cyrillia Deslandes (celebrating her birthday) postponed picking up the kids from the Waldorf school for a couple of glasses and mentioned that the Denneboom sales rep should give her a call (021 418 0001) so she may order stock. For the liver, a 2006 vintage Dornier Merlot, whose intense taste of mulberries was more suited to the liver than Tim Adkin’s plump posterior is to a business class sleeper seat on his eternal quest to reduce CO2 emissions in the wine industry.
Cyrillia on her birthday
One week away from the deadline for submissions for the “SA Wine Writers Prize” and two of the three judges are revealed: Ton Vosloo “(Chairman of Naspers and previous Afrikaans journalist)” and Tim Adkin. Hopefully this is not the infamous freeloader Tim Atkin who had this to say about me on Jamie Goode’s blog earlier this year:
“Chris, no one I know takes Neil Pendock seriously. He is a buffoon with a mediocre palate and a series of blunt axes to grind. Doesn’t he still live with his mother?
Tim Atkin MW”
Is this Tim Adkin?
