Hi 22C° Low 7C° | 
Pendock Uncorked
11 hours, 59 minutes ago
The Wheel Deal
1 day, 8 hours ago
GabiVille
6 days, 12 hours ago
The Wanderer
1 week, 1 day agoView all Times LIVE Blogs
One of the many shortfalls of wine competitions was inadvertently highlighted by Simon Hoggart, pundit at the Spectator magazine’s wine club, at the end of April. Writing about the Sumaridge 2009 Merlot he opined “I opened a bottle the other night and thought it very good. After it had been opened for a while I thought it was excellent. By the following evening, it was stunning; ripe, rounded and oozing with flavour.” Sounds like a Brie from Lodine Maske.
A Brumby is a free-ranging feral horse Down Under, but from the looks of the Brumbies player cradling the Balthazar of Viljoensdrift River Grandeur Merlot 2007 at a Wine Charity Auction at the yearling sales in Germiston last night, there is nothing feral about the Brumbies touring SA at the minute. Stabled at Monte Casino, let’s hope they are free-ranging, for the sake of the SA gene pool. The Merlot was knocked down for R5000 by racy auctioneer Graeme Hawkins, who makes Rael Levitt look like a rank amateur. If SARS had given Quoin Rock to Graeme, the SA University of Wine would be celebrating the end of the first semester already.
Reading the blog elitismleadstotyranny of Oxbridge boat race saboteur Trenton Oldfield this morning, it is amazing how many of his suggested tips to bring the ivory towers of elitism crashing down, have already been deployed in SA.
Wine Blogger (l) and Class Warrior (r)
How cool it was to eat rare pan-fried hake, basil and tomato crushed potatoes, Parmesan velouté, mussel and saffron vinaigrette in the Pierneef à la Motte restaurant last night while listening to the secrets of Spain played on guitar by that George Clooney lookalike, James Grace. For this was no WINE magazine money-making opportunity with bizarre sponsor that pretty much defined the SA tasting scene for the last decade. No siree! This was the first event for Classic Wine magazine and publisher, Dominic Ntsele dropped more bombshells in his witty address than an Apache helicopter piloted by Prince Harry. Here he is being painted by Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef.
The news that HCI recently bought another 688 shares in KWV at R8.50 each – which triggered a mandatory offer to shareholders to buy everyone out at that price – comes as no surprise. The price is a far cry from the R11.80 HCI paid to Jannie Mouton’s Zeder for the initial investment earlier this year but well above the R7 the security was trading for in September.
Farmers must be kicking themselves for not grabbing the offer from Pioneer Foods with both hands, but can congratulate themselves on remaining proud owners of one of Irma Stern’s best paintings. The current offer values 100 shares at roughly the retail price of four bottles of the flagship Roodeberg named after its inventor, Dr. Charles Niehaus. A 2010 blend of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, Charlie is richly fruited and densely intense. But even more importantly, brings the KWV icon red kicking and screaming into the New World of accessible wine styles upon which the very future of the company depends.
Charlie Niehaus, a new old face of KWV quality
The parking lots and manicured lawns of Spier were buzzing with mosquitoes and wine hacks (Stellenbosch specializes in blood suckers) last night. Well at least those not yet ripped up, anti-Joni Mitchell style, to plant vineyards as the Platter guide 2012 hilariously claims. The occasion was Jay Pather’s White Lights Party which lifts the curtain on the launch of a new all-singing, all-dancing tasting facility at lunchtime today.
Frans K Smit
Tertius Boshoff, SA’s globetrotting winemaker from Stellenrust was in Singapore last week and tweeted an ad from HSBC bank that Turkey has three times as many acres of grapes as SA. Some creative must have had a brain fart, for what does that mean to your average Singaporean? I tasted some Turkish Cabernet at the Concours Mondial earlier this year and my doors were blown off. They say things like this come in threes, so no surprises to read in The Guardian that Turkey is now making wine bottles from paper that will reduce carbon footprints to pixie size.
Chateau cardboard
“You pronounce it dela-GAY” insisted the Bailli Délégué of the Chaîne des Rotîsseurs, François Ferreira, in the Pearl Room at the Oyster Box last night. The occasion was the intronisation of a fresh batch of members into the 350 person dining and dancing club, including the head chef of Southern Suns who came off second best in a medieval dueling swords ceremony with Joan of Arc Alison Rutowitz, the Maître de Cérémonie. The Chaîne is sort of like the Free Masons but French and without the aprons and funny handshakes. Or if there was any hanky-panky, it went over my head. Oyster MD Wayne Coetzer thought the event could be confused with a pensioner’s dinner until the band struck up, the ladies shed their shoes and Strictly Come Dancing came to Umhlanga.
François and KZN Young Chef of the Year
The unveiling yesterday of bottle stickers for successful entries in the controversial Top 100 SA Wines competition/retail opportunity/wine guide/consumer show/Beano comic bonanza/what-have-you would seem to place the award on the same level as a Veritas Gold medal, judging by the R300 plus VAT for 1000 price tag. Somewhat less than a Double Gold (R420 plus VAT) but substantially more than the R170 plus VAT for 1000 Veritas charges for Silver and R120 plus VAT for Bronze. Heck, at 30c a bottle, Top 100 SA Wines is pricier than Eben Sadie’s Swartland Independent and not half as sexy.
Bashful billionaire Dick Enthoven was lunching at Societi Bistro on Wednesday and I didn’t dare look to see if chicken was his choice. For roast capon just has to be his favourite bird, given the stellar performance of Nando’s in which he’s a major investor. It has now spread to 32 countries and has 234 branches in the UK and Ireland alone. Offering peri-peri chicken in various formats, Nando’s has taken SA-Portuguese poultry around the world. How much longer before Spier, one of Dick’s other investments, makes a Vino Verde-style zippy and zaftig petillant white which will drain the lake of unsold SA wine faster than you can say Maria Gomes.
