22 JULY 2004

Wonderful news

I do sometimes feel rather sorry for pinotage – perhaps my soft spot for it is because we’re pretty much of an age. The fickle public and fickler critics seemed to be liking pinotage (if not me) a few years ago, but things are swinging back. I have already reported on Wine mag dropping its Pinotage Challenge in favour of fashionable shiraz, apparently at the sponsor’s behest. Adding insult to injury, as the mag flounced out of the friends-of-pinotage camp, deputy editor Christian Eedes wrote an editorial delivering a few nasty kicks at the victim of their change of ‘heart’, in an attempt to grace the move with a few justifications.

Meanwhile, I was glad to see pinotage performing well in the International Wine and Spirit Competion, with Kaapzicht Steytler (including 40% of the noble grape) being declared ‘the best on this earth’. Well, that’s how it was put in the PR’s email letter carrying a gushing media release. Perhaps there’s a better one on some other earth? (Not unless pinotage has spread further than one suspected, even beyond New Zealand.)

The email continued in measured tones: ‘The Cape’s own is here to stay! Wonderful news for most of us!’ I bet that Wine mag’s deputy ed is firmly considered to be excluded from that rather pointed ‘most of us’. Xtian, as Mr Eedes was memorably dubbed in a piece of hate mail to a wine website not long ago, will, I suspect, be getting a bit more vitriol coming his way – probably redolent of acetone and jam.

But pinotage does seem to have some pretty powerful friends too. ‘This award’, said the maker of the best red blend on this earth, ‘is a blessing from God’. No wonder wine judges feel unloved – even when a winemaker thinks the right wine won (ie, his own), the credit goes elsewhere....

Neville proffers his wisdom

Whatever he’s done for pinotage, Xtian did the readers of his Gulp newsletter a big service recently by bringing to our awed attention one Neville Dorrington, owner of a winery called Rijk’s, which has done quite well in a few competions in recent years. Neville is apparently not only good at making vast amounts of money out of leather goods, his seven or eight years of owning a winery have not been wasted – he is clearly now an expert on all aspects of wine, pronouncing even on such matters as terroir (he’s sceptical).

As well as trashing a millennium of French experience, he doesn’t think much of the Cape’s winemakers, apparently: There are 10 winemakers good enough to make wine at Rijk's, he says, ‘but there are no more than 10’. I wonder who the other nine are (presuming that one of the elite is already working for him)....

He also passes swift judgement on Franschhoek, which, he pronounces magisterially, hasn’t produced a decent wine for a long time. I suppose Boekenhoutskloof, for example, should maybe just give up trying with its home-grown cab and its sémillon, and relocate to ... where’s it? Tulbagh? – or maybe Nev thinks Boekenhoutskloof should just try to find one of those rare winemakers with talent and expertise. Like the one who’s going to be making a ‘concept wine’ from his newly planted vintages; the precise blend is uncertain, but he’s already made the really important decision – that it will carry an ultra-premium price tag.

Nev is ‘not an average person’, he tells us. Whew! After all, his vision of the world and everyone else is not so bleak; there’s something to be grateful for.

Legs

Briefly back to Wine mag. For those worried by Xtian’s report that ‘Editor Fiona McDonald is on the last leg of her walking holiday in Spain’, I’m happy to tell you that she came back with both legs seemingly in good condition.