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The view from the terrace of Constantia Uitsig restaurant (below) is excellent and so too are the wines. So much so, that fully 35% of production from the 30ha of vineyards is sold off the farm – tasting room, River Café, La Colombe and Uitsig proper. A better result indeed for 50% owners Tokyo Sexwale and Mark Wilcox than the ANC’s Mangaung meeting last month. The pair were on the farm last week and some deckchairs on SA Titanic are expected to be re-arranged soonish, especially after Mvelaphanda sold its stake in the Times Media Group to Caxton, kings of community newspapers, one of the few profitable aspects of legacy publishing left. Could another wine investment be on the cards for Tokyo and Mark?
Platter assistant editor Tim James publicly contradicts Christian Eedes’ Top Ten Sauvignon Blancs announced this week at an awards lunch so good, some judges only left at sunset. Which could be behind the curious NB which introduced the invitation to attend the Nedbank Green Awards received on Thursday: “Please advise whether you will require a prepaid parking ticket – the ticket will be valid for 4 hours – longer is for your account.” Or is this a sop to the drink drive lobby?
Of course Tim and Christian are entitled to their own opinions (even if informed sources confirm that Christian is the superior taster in a blind environment) but when both gentlemen individually taste different wines for the same guide and emote separately, it’s contradiction city, folks! Oh for the days when John Platter would taste all entries – at least there was consistency. Meanwhile, where the heck are those 2011 five star stunners so we may stuff our Christmas Stockings? asks the man in the bottle store.
If panels are not an option to create a single voice, rather than let pundits cherry pick producers they wish to taste sighted, Platter publisher Andrew McDowall should seriously consider tasting by cultivar. Assign Christian to Sauvignon Blanc by all means and let Tim deal with Fernão Pires. Michael Fridjhon as Paladin of Pinotage and Angela Lloyd as Matriarch of Muscadel certainly has legs.
Tasting room @ Bloemendal
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
Among ancient Greek philosophers, it was Aristotle who liked the bottle and Archimedes who jumped out of his bath with the cry of Eureka! to run around town in the alltogether.
Archie was excited by his novel solution to the problem of determining whether the new crown of King Hiero II was made of solid gold, a commission perhaps received from a forebear of Laurence Graff at Delaire. But if he returned to Durbanville today, it would surely be the 2009 vintage Sauvignon Blancs being poured at the Eureka onthaal lokaal last night that would provide a Eureka! moment.
“There are no nametags” apologized Pieter de Waal, the hairy hedonist behind Hermit on the Hill whose own 2007 Pinot Noir was drinking startlingly well “we have no media royalty here” at the Durbanville Boutique Wine Association Spring Festival. All true as Hiero was busy and the Queens in attendance were all of the glamorous social persuasion. The Daily Dipsos, Weekly Winos, Monthly Mavens, Platter Pundits and even the bullying Fashion Police from Grape were conspicuous by their absence, Durbanville being a half marathon away from Kenilworth and no Kango Shiraz 2008 on offer, of which more next week.
The rudiments of a Sauvignon Sensory Safari are being assembled and the new wines produced by farmers who previously sold all their grapes to Durbanville Hills are starting to emerge. Thys Louw’s majestic Maastricht 2009 will be featured in the Sunday Times tomorrow (I had the privilege of meeting patriarch Wheatie Louw last night) if an ad or the Good Value Guru doesn’t squeeze us off the page but the Welbeloond 2009 from Andrew Mellish also impressed and at R40 a bottle, Aristotle would surely like a bottle.
Andrew Mellish
Like economic recovery, the first green shoots of vintage 2009 Sauvignon Blanc – the strong suit among SA whites if you ignore white blends like FIFA does – are starting to emerge… and they’re pink! I’d been looking forward to my first Durbanville Sauvignon Blanc ever since I read Johnny Golightly Comes Home (Penguin, 2009) by Pat Hopkins. A biography of edgy contemporary artist John Anthony Boerma, the climax of the book has author trying to kill himself by jumping off the top of Durbanville Hill. Hopefully not the Suider Terras that Tokyo Sexwale bought last year!
“How agricultural!” as my friend Susan said. Susan gets blamed for bringing Johnny home to SA after bumping into him at Hannah and her Scissors (geddit, Woody Allen aficionados?) in South Beach, Miami. Only problem is that Sue (as she’s abbreviated) has never been to Florida…
Susan, Luan and the pink Diemersdal 2009
Anyway, Pat only succeeded in bustin’ up his ankle real good – a bit of an anticlimax which the Diemersdal Sauvignon Blanc 2009 is not. For starters, it’s pale pink in colour. More onion skin than oeil de perdrix perhaps, but pink nonetheless (see above). Susan, Luan and I had gone to Il Posticino, the undiscovered gem of la cucina Italiano in Seapoint, for Saturday lunch.
I’d ordered linguine aglio olio peperoncino and when I asked for a serviette larger than the Kleenex the cutlery arrives wrapped in (the dish being a famous splash city special and me wearing white and all) I was given a green tablecloth with a cigarette burn hole to fasten onto a button. Susan’s request for a chili with a little heat summonsed the patron, who popped over and picked a fat red job from the planter next to the table. Rusticity rules! Next stop, a listing as one of San Pellegrino’s Top Fifty Restaurants of the World!
Chili stocks at Il Posticino
On the evidence of the Diemersdal, 2009 should be a great vintage for SA Sauvignon with none of that acid reflux that stuffed up 2008 and made Johann Rupert comment that 2008 SA Sauvignon was good news for Rennies sales. As for the pink effect, it’s caused by reductive winemaking. It can be fixed by adding PVPP, something that Diemersdal, who bottle in batches, may wish to consider. For at Veritas 2007 around one in five Sauvignon Blancs were disqualified for being too Grace Jonesish in her la vie en rose) phase.
Pink Sauvignon Blanc is nothing new for Diemersdal. It happened in 2007 and was fixed, but restaurants delivered clear bottles kept trying to reorder the pink version. Could this be the reason they went on to launch a Sauvignon Rosé (Sauvignon Blanc with a splash of Cabernet Sauvignon)? After all, the world of wine is littered with the fallout from happy accidents…
The oesfees on Solms-Delta was the most fun event in the Winelands last year, by a country mile. A celebration of the bounty of nature, the pioneering vision of Mark Solms and Richard Astor, the irrepressible joie de vivre of the farm worker community and the sheer exuberance of Afrikaans vernacular music are the highlights of Episode 3 of a BBC series on wine which flighted in the UK earlier this month.
The Platter wine guide is a bit like Bill Clinton: a cheerful face that has been around for ages but not someone you’d consider hiring as a babysitter. On the very day the Platter Pundits assembled for their annual game of Five Star Russian Roulette, the Times runs a story Wine makers sour over stars. Platter publisher, avuncular Andrew McDowell, attempts to defend the indefensible with the comment “blind tasting is essential for competitions, but the Platter guide is exactly that, a guide — not a competition.” Read More…
Whistling in the dark perhaps, but when I wrote this wine survey for the Financial Mail last month, I opined that with exports and local sales up and quality never better, wine is one bright spot in a gloomy retail landscape. Read More…
