Somewhat diluted fire water 11 June 2008

A review by Tim James of a new ‘definitive’ book on South African brandy

Fire water: South African brandy By Wendy Tourien; Photographs by Craig Fraser
Published by Quivertree in association with the South African Brandy Foundation. Hard cover, 208 pages. RRP R330

If this book were a wine, I think it would probably be susceptible to accusations of being over-oaked, over-ripe, and rather lacking substance. But it is undoubtedly showily, even beautifully packaged: the book is immensely handsome, with thick pages, a good deal of colour, lavishly illustrated. If you suspect, however, that black print (with some rather irritating white print highlights) on deep metallic green is not all that easy to read, you’d be right. Not all of the text is on metallic green: there are half pages of pale cream, others of pale green, others a little browner.

The text comes in an exuberant variety of sizes, sometimes mixed up in a way that most designers would consider illiterate, some in italics, some not, some with boxes around it. That’s all the equivalent of the egregious over-wooding – as is the occasional juxtaposition of two full-page photographs). It is over-designed, evidencing more enthusiasm and a huge budget (I suspect a Distell subsidy despite the heavy price) than good taste and an understanding of how printed communication works best and most elegantly.

Fitting the design pattern, the photographs by Craig Fraser are unquestionably superb: it is a real visual pleasure leafing through the book. There are a lot of close-ups, particularly – of grapes, glasses, pot-stills, etc, but there are no attached captions to the photographs and they would be unnecessary, as the pictures are decorative rather than informative. There is at the end of the book a list of captions, however, which cursorily deals with at least some of the images. (This isn't listed on the Contents page however - a lack of compliance with the usual basic requirements of book publishing that is insignificant compared with the extraordinary lack of any title page whatsoever! In fact it is only on the final page, apart from the dust jacket, that we are told who is responsible for writing the book.)

There are some other illustrations scattered through Fire water that are more informative of processes and products: quaintly perky, casual, pastel-hued drawings, accompanied by a horribly curly and tiny script. The style is not at all well matched with the overall handsomely grand effect of the book.

Oh dear. It would be nice to say that the text makes up for the over-elaborate and shallow design, and in some parts it does. The heart of the book deals with ‘The source of the fire water’ – how brandy is made, and that is a well-presented and useful account – although I would have appreciated a bit more on the vineyard origins of Cape brandy. For example, the prevalence of old-vine chenin of the Paardeberg in the Swartland is sometimes credited to the exigencies of the brandy industry, though I suspect it has more to do with the Lieberstein revolution of white table wines, but I didn’t notice any mention of the Swartland at all. The section on history seemed pretty much as vague and repetitive of previous accounts – I doubt if much research went into this.

Above all, I would have appreciated some discussion about how – and indeed if – South African brandy fundamentally or superficially differs from Cognac, say, or the brandies of Spain. There’s some discussion, certainly, of different grape varieties used, but there is no overview of the character of the industry – although Michael Fridjhon’s introduction hopefully talks about ‘a national treasure … a uniquely South African creation’ which at its most sophisticated ‘offers the site specificity that is normally associated with Armagnac’. Dave Hughes’s Foreword says that ‘this country’s brandies all contain and express a uniquely South African identity with a very special taste of place’. Such phrases come trippingly off the tongue or the word processor, but are less easy to substantiate. Unfortunately I found little support for such claims in Wendy Toerien’s text.

There is a section, surprisingly short, looking at the different producers of ‘industrial’ and estate brandies, but that didn’t offer a great deal. The section on ‘cooking with brandy’ is rather longer, and includes some recipes from leading Cape restaurateurs, and some more gorgeous photographs.

To some booklovers the superficial character of this volume would be sufficiently indicated by pointing out that it has no index. How, indeed, can a book claiming to be the ‘definitive book on the modern era of the South African brandy industry’ be so unaware of the duties of a serious account as to not have an index! This is a book to be browsed (it is mostly too bitty and broken up for sustained reading) with some interest and pleasure, but don’t expect too much of it.

COMMENT

From Riaan Smit:
The text writers also could not find space to even once mention the name of an industry pioneer, Mr Brandy himself, Pietman Retief. That's rather regrettable.