Have wine, must sell it. Bruce Jack makes it all the way to Nova Scotia to do just that

Despite my ‘parliamentary gift’ of two Flagstone Noon Gun bottles to the check-in lady at Cape Town airport I was placed near the back toilets, squashed against the tapering side between the windows of the fuselage, known at this end as the fusel-small. My fellow row passengers groaned audibly as they saw me shuffle down the aisle towards them.

‘Oh, no, a fat one,’ the lady gurgled, not quite under her breath. She swapped her middle seat with her husband, who was already twitching for a cigarette.

The air hostess’s patience and smile thins towards the back of cattle class. Up front you can ask for a seventh tiny bottle of ubiquitous Swartland Pinotage and they look at you with a pitying tilt of the head, as though you are some stressed out but highly motivated businessman. Do that at the back and you are treated like a leper. Not that this stops me. I need my medication to take the edge off each turbulent jolt of paranoia bumpy flights ensure.

By the time I have eventually pointed out that my earphones don’t work and I’d really like another tiny bottle of something, my nicotine-deprived neighbour becomes edgy, glancing menacingly at me from seven centimetres away. We’ve been elbow wrestling all through dinner.

Turns out, though, that he hates flying, so we find something in common, and together clear out anything in the small bottle category we can wrangle from the prison wardens of the sky.

At Heathrow I grab my favourite hangover cure, a ‘Super Smoothie’ and catch the interconnecting flight to Toronto. On arrival, it’s 5ºC outside.

After presenting a 12 bottle tasting and presentation on South Africa’s new wine regions to a group of Ontario journalists for Wines of South Africa, I indulge in a bit of friendly, wine-nerd sparing with Canada’s only Master of Wine, Igor Ryjenkov. Being an MW must be as frustrating as the Head of Ground Crew during the Battle of Britain. You know far more than the flyboys (winemakers) about flight (wine), you are usually more intelligent, but you aren’t actually flying and no one remembers you afterwards.

That night I somehow get wedged in a bar with a guy called Donnie and his minders; Paula’s an ex-cop with a big stainless steel handgun, and Frank is an ex-hockey professional.

Donnie’s in ‘construction’, he tells me, and a bit of diamond mining – that sort of thing. We are halfway through the extensive cocktail list (he’s buying for anyone in the room who can keep up), when the manager invites us to help interview Playgirl hopefuls for a new Playboy Channel TV series. Luckily, I had already bought tickets to see that wine-nerd movie called ‘Sideways’, so I decline the invitation.

‘You gotta be kidding, sperm whale’, Donnie announces to the bar.

‘Sorry, buddy, the truth is I am a wine nerd.’ I explain.

‘Cool’, says Paula, ‘You know wine! Wow!’ And gives me a high five.

Donnie says: ‘Yeah, I like wine. I bathed some cheerleader bird in fucking Crystal last week. Hell, was she a weirdo! Cost me a fucking fortune.’ I decide I like Donnie. It was a good use of champagne. I pull on my beanie, and say goodbye. Even the mobsters are friendly in Canada.

The next morning I am very impressed with the hotel Eggs Benedict and am soon on a one-hour flight to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Flagstone Winery had been invited by the NSLC (Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation) to the intriguing, historically fascinating port town of Halifax. Say ‘The Corporation’ like you would say ‘The Broederbond’ to give this organisation the eerie gravitas that government-controlled liquor buying institutions command in Canada.

Outside on arrival its 0ºC and two big guys in puffy ski jackets, jeans and big boots share a cigarette. As soon as they see me the one comes over, sticks out his hand and says: ‘Welcome to Nova Scotia, sir’. He helps the other guy put my bags in the back of a taxi and waves us goodbye, before moving his taxi forward.

‘Do all you taxi drivers always help each other with the luggage?’ I ask.

‘Sure, it doesn’t cost anything to help oot.’ Nova Scotians don’t say ‘out’, they say ‘oot’. This is great. I ask as many questions as I can, the answer to which might potentially include the word ‘oot’.

I book into my room overlooking the spectacular Halifax harbour and bridges and crash for a 20 minute power nap in preparation for a Flagstone presentation at the NSLC flagship store.

The tasting is over-subscribed. I love tastings like these. I warm to the intense note-taking and informed questions. I get a fuzzy feeling when I see people re-checking tasting glasses for ‘cupboard’ taint and polishing them. These people are part of my tribe. I get revved up and go on for hours. You can’t be lonely in the world of wine.

The next evening I have to deliver a speech to the 550 dressed up guests at the NSLC’s annual six-course Banquet Dinner. I am not a natural fan of banquet dinners, especially when I have to talk three-quarters of the way through the meal. To drink or not to drink?

It is always better not to drink, if, like me, you are seated next to the NSLC’s Head Wine Buyer, Bev Sponagle – the most important person alive if you are trying to sell wine in this part of the world. Remarkably she is also one of the nicest people I have ever met – this, dear reader, is one hundred per cent unusual. Buyers wielding this sort of power are usually self-obsessed, tumbling egos. That taxi thing, that nice Nova Scotia thing … it’s a bit bizarre at first. You keep suspecting maybe you are on candid camera.

On my left was a winemaker from Priorat, Joan Carol – a friend and neighbour of Eben Sadie, and next to him sat Jesus. It’s not long before I say: ‘Hey, Jesus, you must be named after the best winemaker in the world.’ ‘Well,’ replied Jesus meekly, ‘I am actually only the export manager for North America, the Far East and India.’

Jesus Ortique it turns out sells shedfulls of vino from a massive, very successful winery in Valencia called Gandia. I suggested he should attack the Indian market with a new brand called Mahatma Gandia – my brand origination skills now fuelled by a seventh glass of Canadian maple syrup wine. I kid you not – very delicious.

Suddenly my name is called and I confidently weave off to the podium, convincing myself once again that if Dylan Thomas could do this sort of gig wasted, so could I.

I talked at length about my favourite subject: the commonality of humankind and how wine is surely the glue. I mentioned the overlooked fact that everyone in the room shared a single ancient grandmother and she came from Southern Africa – hence everyone, even Canadians, can’t help being touched by authentic South African wine. I noticed they had removed my main course by the time I returned to my seat.

‘It got cold’, Bev explained.

That Thursday night I wound up at a great little pub called the ‘Economy Shoe Shop’ sampling local micro-brews with Peter Rockwell, NSLC hitman, and the owner of the pub, Victor Syperek; part-time mayoral candidate. Victor had just driven a truck load of tree trunks into Nova Scotia from somewhere down south.

I pointed out that Nova Scotia probably had more than enough trees of its own to cut down. Very true, he agreed, but if you cut down trees in Nova Scotia how could you possibly enjoy the beautiful eight-hour coastal drive up from New Brunswick? It made perfect sense at the time. Anyway the next Propeller Draft was on Victor.

Friday is the first day of the improbably famous NSLC Port of Wine Festival. As a result of the world-wide oversupply and saturation of brands, every inch of this global village market is fought for. That’s why people trek into the wild, uninhabited corners of Canada to sell wine. There’s nothing ‘share’ about ‘market share’. Either you tear a tiny piece away from someone else, or you die.

Little Halifax annually attracts over 70 wineries from 11 countries, showing 272 wines. Over 5000 people visit the show and spend $480 000 in two days at the temporary wine shop in the convention centre basement. The Friday show was brilliant. The Flagstone table had a constant scrum of patiently waiting Canadians, glasses extended, palates unpolluted by preconceptions.

That night I dined at a restaurant called The Press Gang. I made the mistake of carrying a bottle of The Berrio Sauvignon Blanc out of the show. You can’t do that, security said at the door. ‘Bugger, you’, I replied. I presented, with glee, the bottle to my hostess. She baulked like a frigid frigate before a deadly iceberg. Liquor, it seems, is a dangerous thing to fling freely around in Canada. Every single drop goes through the channels, the correct channels.

The bottle remained firmly closed. Luckily the lobster was great. My guests were Laurel Keanan, the very under-funded, but supremely competent WOSA agent in Canada, and her Wines of Australia counterparts. These guys and girls are strategy-obsessed wonders. The heated intellectual ovens of media planning, the cunningly executed amuse bouche of under-the-line marketing, the chilli of copywriting, the sauce of misinformation, the ‘sweet’ success of Yellow Tail … a meal in the presence of real cooks. I sat fascinated by the conversation, transfixed by the jargon.

I woke a little shaky on Saturday, but didn’t want to miss the Eggs Benedict. It was nearly nine when I stepped into another very slow Halifax lift. Breakfast was almost over, so I broke into a little run down the lobby, bursting into the breakfast room, and colliding with a very tall Tom Selleck. He really is quite a big oke. What on earth were they putting him in a Ferrari for?

There were murmurings as I left the hotel that a flurry of snow was expected. Five centimetres max, they said confidently. By the time the wine show had finished for the day a harrowing 30 cm had fallen. During the subsequent pub crawl through Halifax with Sarah Gandy, the Kumala sales manager in Canada, we jokingly took bets who would be snowed in the next day.

We walked for miles through what I suspect would be classified a blizzard, looking for Campari. 60 cm of snow was an impressive sight the next morning. I lost the bet: Sarah flew out on the only flight and I was snowed in for 48 hours.

I remembered something my grandmother told me as I slid and bumped over the snow and ice from the closed airport back to the hotel. ‘Only do business with people you like.’ I have never believed that was a choice I could make. I thought it was a Mancunian cloth trade anachronism. I was cynical, before I got snowed into Nova Scotia.

That night I found Jesus.

He was snowed in as well. I found him in the hotel restaurant and we drank a bottle of Guigal Grenache Blanc and a ripper Shiraz from Mount Langhi Ghiran. We swapped hairy travelling salesman stories, compared websites and agreed that any wine show where the gorgeous Patrizia Torti was showing her equally mesmeric Pinot Noir, was worth a second visit.