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Great minds think alike. Two days before Wanted tumbled out of my Business Day on dismayingly economical newsprint, Luan Nel opened his Twitter exhibition at Everard Read. Here are some studio images – see if you can pick the Wanted cover which this issue is devoted to birds. That print quality is much reduced adds weight to the rumour that editor Gary Cotterell will soon relinquish his editorial La-Z-Boy recliner.
The opening of Luan Nel’s latest exhibition Twitter at the Everard Read Gallery in Cape Town last night was a big fat success and the wines served (Lemoenfontein Pinotage 2010 and Astronaut Chenin Blanc 2011, both terroir treffers from the Siebritskloof of the Paardeberg) were well received. Who says Swartland wines or fine art need to have sky-high prices? The wines were all under R50 a bottle and the small works (below) R6K.
The silence from well-paid SA wine industry bodies on the labour crisis in the Winelands and calls for a wine boycott by the ANC in the Eastern Cape is fast becoming a crisis itself. While scenes of Ceres going up in flames this morning (below) percolate as far as Saint-Hippolyte in Alsace, where is the leadership?
The plot thickens. While wild stories of passports being seized and Elton John-sized tiara tantrums in the palace hypnotized the international media, Uncorked received the following e-mail from Christophe Durrand, winemaking owner of Vins d’Orrance, purveyor of the best value-for-money wines available at Caveau wine bars in Cape Town:
“We were told a few weeks ago but with my superstitious character, I waited until today to make it official. Yes indeed, I can now proudly announce that my Chardonnay 2009 Cuvee Anais wines was the only South African wine chosen for the wedding of the Prince Albert II and Miss Charlene Wittstock.”
Elements of the French media claimed that Charlene tried to flee the wedding
This from last week’s Financial Mail: As Lex pointed out in the Weekend Financial Times at the end of April, gold and wine have both proved to be excellent investment vehicles. “Since January 1997, booming demand from Asia, particularly China, has helped push up prices – 422 per cent for investment grade Bordeaux and 418 per cent for the metal. In comparison, the S&P 500 is up only 70 per cent.”
Brilliant story from David Gelles on the increasingly blurred divide between content and commerce in today’s Weekend Financial Times which goes some way to assuaging the double whammy of the cover price rising 8% to R40 (so much for the strong rand) and the absence of agony uncle Sir David Tang in the iconic pink pages. Perhaps he was too busy with royal wedding duties!
Sir David and the grandmother of yesterday's groom
Looks like the decision of Robin “snatch” von Holdt, CEO of the controversial Top 100 Saint James Wine competition to offer membership of his “wine industry executive” to the WOSA CEO is paying off, with support for the competition from Su Birch on Twitter (678 followers, 908 tweets) “good reaction here, winning over the skeptics” although her re-tweet of a report in German by Mario Scheuermann won’t win over this skeptic. Here’s how Google translates Mario:
Variety is in our Nature: Top 100 St. James Wines
Shocked to see Jan 406 tweet that I’m not a fan of bloggers and tweetsters, when I had this to day about them in the Sunday Times on Sunday, a week ago.
Andy Hadfield, of Real Time Wine fame and Brett Garner of Winelands lifestyle freezine The Month, have a lot in common. They’re both preppie thirty-somethings with a compellingly simple idea [CSI] and they’re both married to GPs. Andy’s CSI was to let ordinary wine drinkers submit reviews in plain English to a trio of social media platforms: a blog, Facebook and Twitter, dethroning the groaning superstructure of self-appointed pundits with hideous gnashers and calloused feet who control the current crop of wine guides. Lord Beaverbrooks of the Bottle, if you like.
Brett Garner and Elunda Basson
Lunch today with the future of SA wine guides at Saigon Pho in Milpark and his name is Andy. Andy Hadfield. Thirty, prematurely grey in Diesel glasses and a disarming chuckle, Andy is the voice of a new generation of young consumers, sick and tired of Platter and the meaningless waffle that passes for wine descriptions. “Have a look at this” he says brandishing an iPhone. “I’m choosing a wine at random from the Platter app. Alan Paton. A whole load of Blah-Blah about Alan Paton the writer then three black stars, one half-tone star and one grey star. What does it mean?” And the verbal descriptors are even worse. At least the word “gush” did not appear, which Andy damns as “very gynecological.”
Andy Hadfield
