The Cape's worst wines 3 February 2006

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Jake Easton writes:
 
Hi.  Sitting on the edge of entry into the wine world (on a farm near Greyton), I found myself asking the jaunty question, 'I wonder what the worst wines of South Africa are'.  Now this line of depressive thinking was only true to the moment of trying to understand vine growth cycles and how the guys from Voor-Grooneberg manage to sell grapes in Afghanistan. But, in reality, it led me to think about the bottom end of the wine business. If I only garner two stars from Platter and a half a star from Grape and no bronze medals from the Veritas crowd, does that put me in a special class of mediocre wine or do I remain fully ensconced in the realm of 'shit' wine for the time being. And, if its the latter, who are my fellow stinkers?  All that being said in under five hundred words means that the depth of the worry must be as shallow as my just emptied glass of Meerlust Red. Any help on a bottom twenty list would be greatly appreciated.
 

• Now there's a provocative thought!  Actually, we're about to conduct a poll among the 'experts' on what they think are the best local producers, wines, etc. Perhaps we should include a question about what they think is the worst – though winewriters don't often get to taste the lowest end (we should, but we don't). I think the worst that have come the Grape samplers' way in recent times have been the Gôiya D-Lite-Ful range (click for full comments). If anyone has suggestions on what to avoid, we'd be delighted to share them (no pseudonyms, please, though if you prefer us not to mention your name, we will oblige...). – Tim James

From Rob Morris:
Nederburg Paarl Riesling - here's a stinker for you. As if 'Cape Riesling' or 'Crouchen' isn't cosmetic enough! Spontaneous ulceration on contact! [Rob referring to the fact that, shamefully, 'riesling' in SA is officially reserved for that bland variety he gives the other names for, while the real thing is obliged to prefix itself with 'weisser' or 'Rhine'.]

From Andrew Wild:
Of the big volume wines, surely Graça must have its place amongst the world's worst?

From Clive Sindelman:
The scoring system mitigates against the discovery of really bad wines. Come on I dare you - let's go from minus ten to plus ten and see what we can come up with if only we really focus! Infamy through notoriety is still fame.
(It's true that we're all pretty bland with our scoring. I suppose anything from 10 downwards counts as a negative score on the Grape scale, and that range is hardly ever used. Perhaps we should be more extreme. There is no reason these days for a wine to be that bad, though, and there are not many – but it is amazing that some of the bad wines there are continue to prosper, given the better alternatives at the same price. Inertia, and the power of branding and advertising, I suppose. — TJ)

From Clive again:
We are too polite. Instead of reserving bad marks for technically faulty wines let's give the minus scores to styles we hate. Let's stop trying to be scientific and go really subjective and emotional just like art and movie critics.

From Lutz Kranz:
For those cognoscenti that have not delved the true depths, try Bronco from Montagu ( I think) and Hop Johanna from Ashton. Truly these are kakbekwyne.

From Len Staunton:
I agree lets give bad wines a minus rating, this would remove buying not so good wines and wasting money,and also at the same time cause the winemakers to jack up their product.

  Jake Easton returns to the fray

To echo Clive above...
We are too easy on our industry (though Jeremy Clarkson was too hard by far, because no matter how much Wynand tries to improve Lanzerac it will not happen overnight). 

The best way forward surely is not by pandering to the idea that some rich guy who has bought a huge farm with an interesting terroir (hmmm, money can buy interesting things) deserves to have a four star wine (no matter the endorsements from the leading wine writers...) after only one year in the barrel/bottle from vines that are only 12-15 yrs old. 

Maybe I should be moving on.

The bottom of the RSA bunch is certainly rife with under-wooded critter-label-encrusted oafishly-sugared mouth-moisturizers – and, to name one means we name a hundred. So do we start a McCarthy-esque witchhunt and seek out the lowest levels of vinous drivel and hold the spotlight on them?  Do we tell Omnia  – ooops ‘the company of wine people, people’ or is it the ‘wine drinkers people selling to big names great wines from South Africa’ company?  No matter, they make Lanner Hill SB (maybe one of the best, ever) and employ the finest wine maker in the country – so this means, they can make some seriously silly wine. but, that wine keeps them afloat.  They make money on the critters. They make money on the higher residual sugar in the moneyed sugar sweet American market (Yellow Tail has proved this all too easily). Does this mean that they're making plonk? No flippen way.

Maybe it would be better to name the regions that produce the worst wines and simply avoid the majority of producers from those areas? So where do the worst wines tend to come from?  Somewhere near the Orange river?  China? California? France? And, truly, would you ever include Tassies or Chateaux Libertas when they mean so much to the collective history?

Then again, maybe my original question was moot.

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From Samantha O'Keefe:
Graça is REALLY bad.  I ruined a perfectly good white sauce by trying to use it to cook.  My meal was completely inedible.  (The bottle was brought to us for a braai and was sitting in the cupboard.)  I also find most pinotages unbearable... although when made well, it can work, e.g. Southern Right.  And a bad pinot noir is so bad (Ashton comes to mind), let's make a list of those – especially given the prices they try to claim.