30 August 2004
Nearly missing the plane

I was about to start these few ruminations with the observation that the wine competition season is upon us – but there are so many now that it seems that nearly all bottles can push out their little glass chests with some or other shiny medal affixed to try to convince the unconfident.

Anyway, we’ve just had both the Michelangelo and South African Airways judging. It occurs to me that one thing they have in common is that the Grape editor was not invited to any of their functions! Should he take it as a compliment to his importance, do you think, that Grape has so offended the grandees involved? No, you’re right, it’s probably that they realise they can manage very well without him....

In the case of Michelangelo the umbrage is probably my fault, I fear, because I expressed a few gentle doubts about the merits of the SA Woman Winemaker of the Year Award (in the current print issue), which is organised by the same person.

SAA must dislike Grape, I think, because we had a friendly little snigger last year about them losing, at the last minute, the services of a few of their  judges because, believe it or not, SAA seemed unable to guarantee them air-tickets.... This year, the judges were not announced in advance as they always have been in the past – presumably because there was no certainty tha the airline would be able to find aeroplane seats for them.

I have heard, however, that the gathering where the judges were to present themselves and their views to the press (minus Grape) turned out a hilariously disarrayed event in various ways. Not that there were many people there, I believe. Then there was nearly no-one – the editor of one wine magazine had already left because things were running so late. And the Gautengers and others who’d been flown down for the event were due to fly away ... and the eminent judges were still huddling over their glasses, busily judging away!

The upcountry hacks eventually had to take a late plane home, and were most disgruntled at having to sit in middle seats in poverty class with sweaty armpits in their faces (must have reminded them of the joys of New Zealand – and some SA – sauvignon blanc).

There were, it seems, more wines than usual for the judges to get through. No doubt that’ll be presented by the spin doctors as a major advance in the perceived importance of the SAA selection process. Or could this year’s good turnout at competitions be a reflection of the desperation of producers to get rid of some of the wine cluttering up their cellars? Hoping that it might just be the turn of their little contribution to the glut to get a gold medal or two....

AmEx & Distell’s big bottle

A more genial event than any of these was the Stellenbosch WIne Show last month. Of course, it had a sponsor (American Express), inevitably with a ‘courtesy lounge’ to supply comfortable seats and ‘ambience’ for its VIP guests – who can help themselves to a little drink or two or three away from the hoi polloi (a possibility increasing the importance of the comfy chairs). 

This exclusive venue also meant that the jolly AmEx guests could stay and party on when the lights dimmed and ordinary folk like me had to stagger out. Party they did, apparently, each night – causing some inconvenience to security and other staff. But AmEx was paying, so that’s OK.

Well, OK until the bleary-eyed staffers of the Distell stand arrived one morning to find a key element of their display missing. One of AmEx’s late-partying guests had managed to carry off the ultra-big Balthazar 12-litre bottle of Zonnebloem Cabernet Sauvignon 1989.

Presumably AmEx had to cough up a bit more. Hope they choose their guests more carefully next year, though.

Olof Bergh in drag?

Altogether more dreary, by all accounts, was the launch of the ‘new’ Nederburg Potstilled Solera Brandy. (Distell MD Jan Scannell publicly hoped that the product would appeal to ‘people who perhaps don’t normally drink brandy but will be alerted to this brandy by the Nederburg name’; nonethess those listening to his speech were mostly the same old white-faced crowd – including those who regularly get flown to the winelands for Nederburg events.)

But is the new brandy even less authentic than the venue for this dull and expensive party – the ‘old wine cellar’ that Nederburg recently built apparently according to some old plans and pictures? The early records were discovered, they say, only in 2001, when Razvan Macici took over as Nederburg cellarmaster. And, said Jan Scannell in his speech, ‘it was Razvan’s idea to bring back Nederburg’s brandy-making tradition’. Hence this new brandy.

Some people know, fortunately, rather more about brandy than I do. And some of them were listening to Jan and sipping the brandy – and having the oddest feeling of déja vu: they seemed to distinctly remember the bottle and the taste of the brandy - from before 2001.

Around 2000, brandy sales were suffering (some people said it was because KWV had had to buy in and flood the market with a lot of cheap French stuff in a deal whereby the French would agree not to pursue KWV over that old story of the fake champagne; but of course that can’t be true). Anyway sales were poor (and Distell, I remember, pulled the plug on a real historic label, Paarl Rock).

One of the brandies that was around and disappeared was one made in Worcester, called Olof Bergh Solera Brandy. At the launch party of the new stuff Olof seems, many are convinced, to have made a comeback in another guise, surrounded by a few dates dreamt up by marketing managers....