Some comments on the implications of the 'Wither Hills scandal'
– in which a New Zealand winery was found to have submitted a version of their wine which was superior to the one available on retail shelves – see Michael Fridjhon's column on this)

From Dave Ingram:
When I suggested the possibility of selective bottling about 6 months ago, either intentional or otherwise, I was shut down by Chris Williams who claimed their was no variance within a batch of a bottling. Could I suggest that Chris please contact Wither Hills to provide them with the knowledge they obviously require. (Click here for Dave's original comment on  these problems.)

From Anthony Dodds:
In the light of the Wither Hills skandaal, does Grape buy the bottles they taste or do you rely on the kindness of producers? If the latter, what are these ratings really worth as I'm sure SA producers are at least as imaginative as the Wither Hills folk.

Response: We very seldom buy bottles, and rely on what the producers give us. Of course, yes, that might mean occasionally that we are manipulated, and thus assist in cheating the winedrinkers we claim to be trying to help. The same would, I suppose, apply to all the tastings in, eg, Wine magazine (although they do buy a small proportion, I believe). It is an undeniable problem. Personally I suspect it doesn't happen much, though I can't justify that feeling beyond the thought that actually most people don't cheat. Unfortunately we couldn't afford to do otherwise – which might just mean that we shouldn't do the tastings at all, unless we could get the wines off a retailer's shelf. But thanks for raising the question – it is one that we should consider.

Neil Pendock makes a similar point in relation to the Platter Guide [in a comment on the Widow's column]. He says there: "Why not buy your samples, like the readers who buy the guide? It’ll certainly be my new year’s resolution for 2007." I suspect it would be practically totally unfeasible to do it for Platter: apart from the crippling cost of buying 6000 bottles of wine, many of them are simply not available on the shelves, even fewer at the time when they are needed for tasting.

Response to Dave Ingram from winemaker Chris Williams:
I don't think that I ever suggested that some producers do not bottle different batches of the same wine, all I said was that it is possible to blend large volumes of fairly homogenous wine, say 100 000 litres, either in the same tank or proportionately. I also mentioned that variances in cork, bottling equipment and technique and storage and route to market can account for differences in supposedly similar wines.  One can always analyse the wine chemically, with major variances in the chemistry of a wine a good indication that it is, in fact, a different wine. It would be problematic to do this solely organoleptically, for the reasons stated above.

As Fridjhon correctly points out in his piece, we can be proud of our certification system in many respects, especially of the consecutively numbered seals, which assist in traceability of individual wines. I think Italy and Spain are  the only other counties with such a system.