How annoying it is (I forget if I have remarked on this before) to have researchers coming up every few days with yet another benefit of drinking wine – a glass a day stops hair growing on one’s knees, and the like – and neglecting what is probably its greatest health boon: that it can be a joyous thing to do. It was soothing, nonetheless, to read recently that a dollop of plonk a day has been found to keep older women’s memories from deteriorating. There was something else reassuring – which I trust will come back to me in time for my next column.

Talking of old things, I’ve been noticing recently some second-hand possibilities in the wine industry. One producer I know with heavily virused vines tells me she has no trouble selling those lovely prematurely autumnal leaves that the bright young viticulturists so shake their heads over. Some cranky Germans apparently come each year to strip the vines, in order to make a strange health-giving concoction from them.

Another cranky European points to a novel use for old barrels – they would make a lot of dogs happy. Nicolas Joly, the French pope of true believers in biodynamic viticulture, and the main speaker at the 2005 Nederburg Auction, assures us that if you put a barrel next to a kennel, the lucky dog will virtually leap into it and snuggle up there in preference. Apparently this is for the same reason that wine is so content to be in a barrel – because, says Monsieur Joly, ‘there is an enormous wisdom in the shape of a barrel’, because it ‘is in the shape of an egg’. The two questions that pop into my no doubt inadequate and over-sceptical mind – what sort of eggs do they actually have in France? and why should a dog prefer to to sleep in an egg? – were not answered in the article I read. Perhaps they might be dealt with, in between his thoughts on cosmic influences on wine, in the seminar Nic is giving.

Giving? Well, in a manner of speaking. Being deeply spiritual about wine, the moon and manure does not, apparently stop one gouging an awful lot of nasty non-organic money out of people to whom one is spreading the glad tidings. Income, as opposed to the liquid manure one mixes in cow-horns, doesn’t seem to work on the homeopathic principles of effective dilution. The seminar cost, for 60 people, was R500 each. If he gets even only two thirds of that, it’s a handsome R20 000 for his day’s work. Perhaps when he talks about the rewards of biodynamics we really should pay attention as well as Joly lolly. (I would quote some more of Nic’s published thoughts, but you’d think I was being satirical if I did….)

I wonder what Nic thinks about the dop system. I was recently told that it thrives in France – and is even regulated by an agreement between producers and the trade union, along with wages. But just for the harvesting team, as far as I know: different types of labourer get different amounts: while ‘carriers’ must get three litres per day, ‘cutters’ make do with two. All of which must be a great help with not only keeping the labourers uncomplaining about their no doubt bad wages, but with lowering the level of the French wine lake.

We here don’t have a glut – or so we’re being told now by the authorities, despite the gloom on many winegrowers’ faces. And certainly there are a few other reasons why some stocks are not moving quite as fast as they should. Like greed. I’m told that, for example, JP Bredell are still offering (that is, stuck with) their much awarded and excellent 1998 Vintage Reserve Port. Seems they were given some rather unsound advice by the experts (well, at least one very important one) a few years back after what seemed at the time like an important victory in the Trophy Wine Show. Anyway, Bredell hoicked the price from an admittedly rather modest R86 by some three hundred percent. So there it is – well, there it isn’t in the case of most shops, because no-one’s buying it, fine wine though it is. Is it that it’s simply an unrealistic price? Or are winelovers also increasingly disenchanted by the naked opportunism that some producers show?

Or perhaps they’re not as lastingly impressed as they should be by show-winners. Who actually remembers who wins or scores tops? Do we all go rushing to buy Boland Shiraz because one bunch of tasters in London declared it the best in the world a few years back? Or clamour for the next release of Polla’s Red (remember Polla’s Red’s triumph?!) or turn up our noses at Columella and Boekenhoutskloof because a whole raft of shows and tastings (including one in a recent Decanter magazine, and also including Grape, for that matter), have rated them pretty lowly at some stage?

Anyway, Bredell is certainly not the only producer who might well be regretting over-lavishness in piling on the prices for their fancier offerings. Just have a look at which of the ultra-smart producers are not raising their prices in line with inflation or the rising rand this year. And some with new cult-wine wannabes are grappling with the touch of realism that a more difficult market is bringing. Word is that Vergelegen’s V 2001 is (finally!) going to come out, at a much less cultish price than the R1000 that was being muttered about a few years back. And I’m told there’s quite a bit of worried consulting going about what to charge for the maiden Tokara when it (finally!) appears later this year.

Then they’ll be agonising about whether to enter the wines into those ambiguously important  competitions…. The newest of which, in an increasingly crowded market, the Calyon Bordeaux Blend Trophy, has one notably interest aspect, I thought. Its boss, Michael Fridjhon, is normally in collaboration on such things with Wine magazine (Trophy Wine Show, Chenin and Shiraz Challenges), but here he’s decided to go it alone. The PR firm remains the one Michael usually uses, however – that operated by the redoubtable and rather ravishing Janice Fridjhon. I have it on totally impeachable and unreliable authority that the couple are intending to monopolise even more aspects of the local show system, by training their two sons to be wine tasters. The older one has learned to wearily turn up his nose at milkshakes affected by brettanomyces, while the younger has already moved on from liebfraumilch to finer things. An arranged marriage or two in a few years, to some other good tasters, and the family team might well be unassailable.

To conclude, here’s another bit of handy research I’m happy to pass on to those of you who buy expensive bottles (with wine in them), or simply enjoy feeling the depth of punts on these heavily showy bits of packaging. A British scientist, on Dr Karl Blanks, has established to his satisfaction (and I’m sure to mine) the clear link between the cost of wine and the depth of what the Americans quaintly call the ‘dimple’. Presumably his equation would work in rands, so I’ll translate it approximately for you:

Price = punt depth in millimetres + R40.45 / 4.314

So now you can surreptitiously work out the cost of that unknown bottle your host assures you is so special. If anyone does research into the local applicability of this fascinating theory, please do let us all know. Or not.