25 October 2004
Crystal balls: predictions for 2015

Well, everyone else, from Robert Parker downwards, seems to be doing it. And seeing Bob didn’t even mention the Fairest Cape in his leaden thoughts, I thought I’d better leap in. So, in ten years or so:

• There are now 26 national wine competitions, one per fortnight. (Tony Mossop judges on all of them; he is by now not only incapable of turning down a judging invitation – he cannot even see a glass of wine without writing down a score.) The most successful wines are produced only in magnums so that there is enough surface for all the stickers. Only seven Cape wines have not won gold in some competition (and been slated in another). Michael Fridjhon points out that, if a wine is any good, it has nothing to fear from a properly managed competition, and tells them which one that is – he threatens to sue any winery declining to enter. Veritas remains the largest competition, though, and the awards ceremony lasts two days, as 50% of entrants are guaranteed gold or double gold medals.

• The Platter Guide is now published in three thick volumes (plus a slimmer one devoted to the wines of Bruce Jack). Tony Mossop is the sole taster.

• There are rumours that Distell (which last year merged with KWV) is to merge with Flagstone as soon as it has dealt with the Competitions Board’s protests about the coming merger with DGB.

• The Cape’s last three producers of genuine riesling ask the Wine and Spirit Board to hold back on its plans for legislation allowing any really awful white wine to call itself riesling (unless it’s actually made from riesling grapes). Distell, on behalf of the Board, refuses.

• To avoid the inconvenience of having to replant vineyards according to whether white or red wine is in fashion, the Institute of Wine Biotechnology offers genetically modified viognier to produce both. The appropriate taste and bouquet can be squeezed from a genetically modified tube.

• André van Rensburg idly mentions that he doesn’t really like pinotage all that much. The Pinotage Producers’ Association first responds by saying that pinotage offers the Cape a unique selling point (even if European supermarkets only want shiraz and sauvignon blanc). Also, they are sure that they have now solved the bitterness problem. Then they shoot him.
Meanwhile, Peter May, self-proclaimed UK pinotage prophet, is now full-time in Absa's employ to punt pinotage internationally for the Association.

• An ageing Miles Mossop announces that Tokara will celebrate its first 20 years by releasing a maiden wine – pretty soon.

• Vergelegen finally releases its V 2001 – first awarded five stars in Platter in 2003. Unfortunately it becomes clear that they had a cork problem, and all the wine is tainted.

• Just about all wine is now sealed with metal screwcaps or glass stoppers. Old timers remember that when bottles had a bit of treetrunk jammed down their mouths it was mildly accepted that some 2-3% of them would be spoilt. We are learning to cope with the problems associated with screwcapped wines – it’s becoming clear that 2-3% of them are spoilt by reduction or some other factor.

• A new label makes quite a stir, and nobody realises why it looks so fresh and different, until they realise it is the first new label for ten years not to be designed by Anthony Lane.

• New certification rules require all wines with less than 15 percent alcohol to be designated ‘lite’. Red wines must be entirely opaque, and are subject to the ‘pencil test’, whereby a pencil is stood upright in the centre of a glass of wine; if the lack of viscosity allows it to fall over immediately, the wine must be consigned to distillation. The industry (Distell) praises the authorities for maintaining standards and says that only poor quality wines will suffer. Michael Fridjhon says that a properly managed competition will certainly have an adequate supply of pencils.

• The European Union declares that non-members of the Union should no longer be allowed to use the words vino, vin, vinho, wein, wine, etc on labels.

• Neil Pendock achieves a notable goal: he writes his 1000th wine column in which wine is not mentioned at all. The word ‘vinous’ is allowed, however – and Neil still tries to fit it as many times as possible into one sentence. His breakthrough column (a disquisition on Ptolemaic cosmology and the musical tastes of Princess Di) crowns an illustrious career by using ‘vinous’ as a verb. ‘Literary-vinously I can do no more’, Neil gasps, and lays down his computer to retire to one of his 37 properties.

• The wine industry is finally declared to be restructured, as a majority of the prettier or more lucrative wine farms are now owned by rich black businesspeople from Gauteng (financed by the Wine Industry Trust) or deposed dictators from even further north. The government assures black farmworkers, most of whom continue to live below the poverty line, that they should rejoice at this transformation.