Benching 300+ 13 June 2007

Francois Haasbroek works out in London 

No, I didn’t join the gym, nor am I trying to pick up a full barrel to ease the racking process.

That ‘300+’ refers not to kilos, but to the number of wines I tasted during my recent week in London – it’s not all bangers and mash and warm beer, you know. What a truly amazing city. Sure there are many cosmopolitan metropolises out there, but none quite like London: every visit there is cultural overload, from Kensington Gardens to curry in Brick Lane.

During our recent visit representing Waterford we booked ourselves for some serious tasting experiences, starting with the Decanter New World Fine Wine Encounter. Being put in the same space as Argentina and Chile was a blessing – the other hall was the USA, Australia and New Zealand: imagine the culture-ego trip in there!

As far as the wines were concerned – well, we might still have a long way to go, but we are certainly not behind any of our New World competitors. I tasted some absolutely horrendous plonk on the same table as some wines of mind-blowing finesse. Of all of the above-mentioned countries, the one that can confidently claim to produce the least amount (percentage-wise) of sub-standard wine is New Zealand. For all the might of the US and Australia, they have some seriously shocking wines – as do we. Though it might be convenient for the Aussies to claim that their standard is so much higher, but that disregards the fact that they have four times the number of producers as the Cape, to ‘hand-select’ their show-ponies from.

Then on to a bigger, much more intimidating affairs, the London International Wine and Spirits Fair. Take local WineX and multiply it by factors of ten. This is overload and intimidation in the utmost, and probably one of the best-organised shows of any sort I have seen – looking at it from a visitor’s point of view. Given the huge amount on offer, tt took a concerted effort to stick to a tasting plan – it’s hard when you’ve decided to taste your seventy sauvignon blancs not to be tempted to stop off at Guigal’s stand to taste their Ampius Côte Rôtie! But the time for seventy shirazes will come….

Anything and everything you can think of that resembles an alcohol drink was there at the Fair. ‘Resembling’ might be the right word, because it included the most vile wine I ever had the misfortune to encounter, though some others claimed it as magnificent – but catch me when I’m feeling nasty and the name of the wine might be revealed.

I’d say to other local producers: for winemakers at this time of year London is not a holiday town - but book a week of leave next year and attend these shows. Taste and speak to as many people as possible and just possibly the realisation will sink in that we (South African producers) need to broaden our exposure to the world with a united front and not be apologetic for what we are doing. (Which reminds me that someone at the Georgia stand apologised to me for what was suppose to be a merlot!)

There are other South Africans who’ve been working hard in London recently – let’s hope all went well for the three local guys sweating it out there over their Master of Wine exams. I am confident we will soon have a few more Cape-resident MWs alongside Cathy van Zyl.