Casting pearls ...

Some historically informed (perhaps) thoughts on wine quality and price, from
Tim James in his latest Noseweek article

When it comes to wine-related conspicuous consumption you could do worsefor a role model than go back a few thousand years to Ancient Egypt. Back then Californian cult wines and grand Bordeaux hadn’t reached today’s astronomical prices, so when Cleopatra wanted to show Marc Antony how rich and extravagant she and Egypt could be, inventiveness was called for. She took one of the stupendous pearls dangling from her ears, dropped it in her glass of wine and – reports Pliny in his Natural History – “when it was melted swallowed it”.

“That’s, like, awesome”, murmured  (in Latin) Marc Antony. The pearl was apparently worth ten million sesterces (a hundred thousand aurei, if preferred) but the wine is more likely to have been vinegar than Château Pétrus, as drinkable plonk is insufficiently acid to perform Cleo’s trick – which, you will want to know, would have converted the pearly calcium carbonate into calcium acetate, water and carbon dioxide. The formula for this process is apparently CaCO₃ + 2CH₃COOH --> Ca(CH₃COO₂)+ H₂O + CO₂ – please don’t say that we shirk our educational function.

Gold flakes turn up in liquor as a gimmick now and then – local  producer Cabrière has done it in a bubbly tautologically called Aurum Gold – but pearls do not appear on any country’s list of permitted additives. The price in sersterces, aurei or dollars for some wines might suggest otherwise, however. The Californian cabernet Screaming Eagle 2005 is being offered at $750 per bottle to those who’ve clawed an allocation of two bottles; the grandest Bordeaux of that year are easier to get hold of but will cost twice as much.

So if your horizons are merely local, you can revel in the modesty of our most ambitious producers’ aspirations: But even on this reduced level, it’s easier to ask the question as to whether Vergelegen V or Waterford The Jem are worth R700-odd than to answer it with other than a contemptibly evasive yes-and-no.

If you’re going to put them away somewhere cool and dark for a few years, it’s easier to say yes – especially for the slightly pricier Vergelegen, which is very serious, and still pretty tough and unenjoyable to me, but should blossom wonderfully. The Jem should also improve, but is more ingratiating in youth. Both are excellent, but I have a sad, nagging suspicion that comparatively few will be matured, and that quality is less important than the high price to many of their customers (especially those at expensive restaurants in Johannesburg – most rich Capetonians are too mean to buy them).

The usual depressing marketing truths apply to wine: firstly, because good things are often expensive, many believe that expensive things are necessarily good. Connectedly, people pay heavily for fashionable labels and flaunt them, whether Gucci bags or Cristal champagne. Quality is seldom everything. British wine guru Jancis Robinson conducted some tastings of top wines for the rich and powerful at the last Economic Summit in Davos. Vergelegen provided easily the cheapest wine in two of these, and they were amongst the favourites in both cases, ranking higher than some vastly more famous and expensive names. It won’t do Vergelegen’s international sales any harm – but the result is unlikely to change the prejudices of those tasters who preferred the Cape wine to Screaming Eagle and Lafite.

At least, unlike with sunglasses, the prices of the really expensive wines are driven up by a genuine rarity and uniqueness as well as (usually) quality.

For the locals, what Vergelegen et al are really after is less a sustainable price of R750-plus locally than one of $100-plus in the United States, where the rainbow is seen as touching ground. Meanwhile (alongside Vergelegen’s top wines other than V) Sadie Columella chugs along at a bit less, and is acquiring a great reputation here and abroad. Further down the price ladder come fine, established wines like Hamilton Russell Chardonnay and Boekenhoutskloof Syrah – this latter, at a mere R220-odd, one of the hardest local wines to get hold of, and one which can surely sneer a little at the rather vulgar ostentatiousness of outrageous prices.

Incidentally, I have a name to suggest for a grande-luxe wine: ‘Magistery’ – the splendid word for something precipitated by an acid solution, like Cleopatra’s pearly sludge. Blankenberg Co-op Magistery sounds great to me, even if it might have some observers of conspicuous consumption in Mandela Square muttering about casting pearls before swine. In exchange for the idea I ask only for a few bottles, as I probably couldn’t afford to buy the stuff.

• This article first appeared in Noseweek, 'South Africa's unique investigative magazine'