Terroir, travel and advertorials 18 September 2006

A new book on South African wine reviewed by a disappointed Tim James

Elmari Swart and Izak Smit: The essential guide to South African wines. Cheviot, 2006.
224 pages, in colour, with photographs by Jaap Scholten; softy cover; R199

For a moment it looked as though we might have that elusive thing – a good book on South African wine. The basic idea here was excellent: to look at different wine-growing areas distinguished by terroir (soils, climate, aspect) and relate this to the grape varieties grown and to the wines actually produced there. Much good research has been, and is being, done into terroir in South Africa, and the authors of this book (an oenologist and an agricultural ‘business advisor’) brought in first-class experts to cover the issues: David Saayman to be the main contributor on matters of terroir, Eben Archer as the viticulturist, Loftie Ellis and Louis Nel ‘for information on oenological aspects and local wine styles’.

So far, so very good. And in fact there are useful descriptions of terroir in the 24 ‘pockets’ (as they call these areas), with topography, climate, geology, soils, etc, given in sufficient detail for most winelovers seeking to understand a little more about how wine’s flavours and structures are produced. Some reasonable connections are drawn with wine styles, although there is little depth to this aspect of discussion, and there are too many inconclusive or unconvincing generalisations, too many vague descriptions of wines and meaningless compliments. ‘White wines from Stellenbosch Kloof’, we are told for example, ‘show white fruit and floral aromas and have great finesse, whereas the reds are more robust. Jordan Winery’s range of aspects delivers an elegant Chardonnay and a drier style, non-Botrytised Noble Late Harvest’. Um, yes – is that what terroir comes down to, then? (By the way, this is the sort of book where all the wines are good – for a reason that becomes apparent.)

There are some odd aspects to the presentation of terroir matters, however. Firstly, although the ‘pockets’ tend to coincide with wards and districts defined under the Wine of Origin Scheme, they are not specifically related to those widely known areas. The only mention of the WO Scheme is that ‘the various levels of demarcation are somewhat daunting’. It seems rather more daunting, surely, to eschew reference to the concept that is reinforced on most wine labels and in all books on Cape wine, and to call all these areas ‘pockets’, whether they are the size of the Klein Karoo or a bunch of farms around the Annandale Road.

This matter of size is significant. While it is understandable that Stellenbosch, for example, should receive more attention than the Northern Cape, it is not explained why the Stellenbosch area is divided into 12 ‘pockets’ for discussion, while the whole of the Swartland is just one, as are Robertson and the Klein Karoo – and Worcester, Elim and the whole of the West Coast are not even dignified by being called ‘pockets’, and are quickly despatched in a summary of ‘other areas’. Not as much terroir there, perhaps? We should be told!

Also problematic is that, apart from the map of the whole Western Cape on the inside cover, there are no maps to indicate how these ‘pockets’ relate to each other, or to show the mountains and rivers referred to. This is a major weakness of the book. It is accompanied by some splendidly nonchalant but significant errors of description: so the (tautological) Paardeberg Mountain, we are told, ‘is located a few kilometres north-west of the town of Paarl’. It’s actually very much further than that, and in fact the Voor-Paardeberg ‘pocket’ would, from a terroir point of view, have been better considered as part of the Swartland ’pocket’ than the Paarl one – presumably this is a case of the official WO scheme determining how the authors dealt with things, even while they purport to ignore it.

Another, particularly startling, problem in a book about wine and terroir is the lack of interest shown in single vineyards. In fact, the book tells us specifically that ‘there is no legislation allowing recognition of a single vineyard’: this has not been the case for well over a year now, and plans for the new legislation were clear long in advance: there is no excuse at all for Swart and Smit to be so out of date – or, for that matter, to not even mention the concept of ‘Estate wine’, which, inadequate as it is, does also aim to relate directly to the expression of terroir.

The tourism perspective

The shortcomings of the ‘terroir’ aspect of the book would be less troubling if it were not for the other aspect, which we can perhaps categorise as the tourism aspect. Each of the terroir discussions is followed by a section which describes (with the aid of a fragment of road map) the driving route to a few of the wineries in the ‘pocket’, and makes a few other remarks. On the one hand great detail is gone into here: the driver is told to ‘drive cautiously when leaving Glen Carlou as the exit has a blind spot on either side’. On the other side are generalisations of mind-numbing banality and obscurity: ‘This area is quite diverse in style, making very juicy whites and very interesting, layered red wines’.

Literary style, you will have realised from a few quotes, is not the book’s strong point, and some of the writing verges on the illiterate: ‘Port producers from Calitzdorp have over many years proved to be some of the best this country has to offer in port production.’ There is also much ignorance revealed – especially when the authors venture outside of South Africa; it shows itself by mis-spellings, but is certainly not limited to that. So in one paragraph of a rather iffy discussion of the ‘garagiste’ phenomenon, they get the names of both Jean-Luc Thunevin and Richard Neill wrong, as well as ‘château’. Port does not come from ‘the O’Porto region in Portugal’. The sea off Cape Point is not ’dominated by the artic Benguela current’ – probably Swart and Smit mean ‘Arctic’, but should have meant ‘Antarctic’. Vin de Constance is not made from riesling (as they realise on another page).

Sometimes the errors are simply bad sub-editing: La Petite Ferme (in Franschhoek) does have that final e in ‘Petite’; and I doubt if Vergelegen will be pleased to have its Sémillon described as having ‘insipid waxiness’ – at a guess, the adjective grasped at there was ‘incipient’.

The chapter on ‘Geographical areas and pockets’ is the most substantial. There are shorter ones on ‘Tasting and understanding wines and styles’, on how to be a tourist in the winelands, and (believe it or not) on ‘Investing in the wine industry’ – just in case you suddenly decide to buy a wine farm and need a six-page guide on getting it all going.

Advertorial

I mentioned visits to a few wineries in each ‘pocket’. After the route to them is described, each of these wineries gets some often useful description in viti- or vinicultural terms. These are, it is mentioned, ‘sponsored profiles’. The euphemism means that wineries are profiled not according to their importance as wineries but according to whether they handed over a more-or-less large sum of money to the publishers. The more they handed over, the larger the profile. No cash – no profile. Many have a quarter page, with a photograph of a bottle; others have a half-page with an extra photo, a few have full pages, and Bouchard Finlayson must have spent a lot buying two full pages. Given further ‘sponsorship’ by the South African Wine and Brandy Company (and is this really how the SAWB should be using its money?) and the Brandy Foundation, a rough calculation suggests that, at R3000 per quarter page, well over half a million rands was taken in before a single book was sold…. Pretty good business.

Unfortunately, the factor behind the selection of wineries is not going to be obvious to any tourist browsing through the book in a shop – although, sadly, especially in South Africa we should expect this sort of thing. Personally, I respect those wineries that resisted the pressure to advertorialise and were thereby excluded. But surely anyone who knows anything about Cape wine will feel cheated by, for example, a description of the Franschhoek area that doesn’t mention most of its wineries, including what are probably the leading ones –Cabrière, Solms-Delta, Chamonix and Boekenhoutskloof.