The weather (as usual) and 'stomach-heaving' disappointments 5 June 2008

Martin Moore's latest instalment from Durbanville

So, what's the weather like, Martin?
My non-winemaking friends can joke all they want about what they consider my obsession with the weather, but all who make a living from the soil know nothing determines our success or failure more than capricious nature. And how fickle it can be we saw again this past week when the soil in our hills was parched and the cover crops sown between the vine rows were struggling just to make a showing. And then, overnight, a deafening thunder storm followed by lots of rain and cold weather changed all that. Suddenly we had to start worrying about soil erosion, with the immature cover crops not yet capable of slowing down the torrents of water rushing down the hill sides, threatening to wash our precious topsoil into the Atlantic.

But then, driving to the cellar this morning, the skies had cleared and the cover crops were holding up impressively between the rows. Just trust Mother Nature, I said to myself. Here she had generously supplied us with free nitrogen created in the sky as the thunderbolts ignited and, falling to earth, dissolved in the rain. (Let me not get carried away but rather explain: nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide are produced during thunderstorms and when reacting with water, form nitric acid that serves as a powerful plant nutrient, boosting, for instance, the growth of our fast-sprouting cover crop. And it's all for free! As nitric oxide is also known as laughing gas I know you won't miss the humour of the situation.)

 

That's a bit rough!
Who read British wine writer Jane MacQuitty comments about South African reds in The Times recently after she attended a tasting in London of the 2008 Platter 5-star wines? For those who didn't: she found what she described as a "plethora of ugly, burnt, murderous 14,5 and 15% brutes well-nigh impossible to taste", calling them "a cruddy, stomach-heaving and palate-crippling disappointment". ("Cruddy", my new Chambers Dictionary tells me, is slang for dirty or filthy, especially when sticky - Wow!)

Everyone is obviously entitled to his or her opinion, although I would have expected a little more balance. But what the heck, if people think you funny and witty and especially controversial, who cares!

What I did care about, was the generalisation in typifying South African reds - it's no different from the view I frequently come across overseas that all Australian reds are semisweet industrialised plonk. Which is just plain rubbish, for the Australians produce some excellent reds. Just as I believe we do.

I was also somewhat startled by her statement that we are decades behind other New World countries in only now starting on the "terroir trail" (and here I was, thinking we've already gone quite some way down it!). What didn't surprise me was her again hanging the now fashionable label around the necks of South African reds as being burnt and green.

This is a topic I would like to look at in more detail so I will come back to it in the next letter when there is more space available. In the meantime I am heartened by the comments of well-known British wine writer Anthony Rose, recently out here to judge in the annual Trophy Wine Show. Writing in The Independent he does not duck the issues but at the same time gives credit to what local wine makers, are achieving, also in respect of their reds.

The many forms of child abuse
Earlier this month we visited the outlying areas of our gold-bearing provinces. Towns where, to my shame, I haven't been for years, places like Meyerton, Henley-on-Klip, Parys and others. It was not only great fun - except when a seemingly hungry cheetah almost scraped the skin of my arm licking it lovingly - but also most gratifying to hear first-hand from clients what a great job our sales team and distributors were doing.

From there we headed back to the greater Johannesburg area where, assisted by a host of local chefs, we participated in a winemakers' dinner and a charity event in support of Wo+men against child abuse - a most gratifying experience. Discussing over dinner the problems faced by wine farmers I felt obliged to point out that child abuse can take many and unexpected forms.

One of our members claims that with the way wine farmers are struggling to make a living these days leaving a wine farm to the next generation can be considered an extreme form of child abuse. He himself was considering switching to organic farming under pressure from his bank manager - with the price of herbicides and pesticides sky high and his overdraft in the state it is, he might just leave all to nature and let it take its course. And with oil at $130 a barrel he's seriously considering a return to horsepower.

Do we drink to that? Why not. Skol!

• This contribution is  taken, with permision, from the Durbanville Hills April newsletter. It appears in full on the Durbanville Hills website.