Wine-buyers have their moments too  5 April  2005

Let it not be said that fault and daftness are the sole prerogative of winemakers and owners of wine estates, or even of the perpetrators of inane press releases and back-label text (though these people are particularly difficult to forgive). And wine journalists – but, no, I’d better not go there for fear of retaliation.

I’ve recently been learning, though, about some of the bizarre things that customers get up to.

Take, for example, the person who, in 2002, came to claim some wine that he said Welgemeend Estate had promised him as an exchange, because of some problem. He flourished a fax as proof – the fax was dated 1990, and he seemed unsure as to why it had taken him 12 years to respond to it.... But he was demanding a case of the 1984 vintage. The evidence was not entirely convincing, and the Hofmeyrs gently pointed out that 1984 was 18 years previously, and although their wines have a reputation for ageability, it was stretching things a bit to think that they’d still have a case to give him. In placatory spirit they offered him the current vintage. Much irateness followed before this was grumpily accepted, and he trotted off into the sunset leaving them somewhat bewildered.

The staff at Zewenwacht are also scratching their heads right now, over another somewhat eccentric claim. A disgruntled customer is threatening to sue them for the cost of a broken corkscrew. Fair enough, you might think, if the poor customer had broken it trying to extract one of those nasty plastic stoppers that can be impossibly tight. But not in this case. The customer had wrestled and pummelled and wielded his expensive corkscrew in battle with the recalcitrant bottle. Only once he’d broken the wretched thing did he come to realise that the bottle was sealed with a screwcap.

Not unreasonably, surely, Zewenwacht thinks that he might have noticed this significant factor before trying so zealously to open it in this manner. But the customer thinks otherwise. I’ll let you know the result if the case ever comes to court. (It all reminds that, in the famously litigious United States, where all producers of everything go in fear of lawsuits, one winery is only a little facetious in indicating in large type at the bottom of its back label: ‘Open other end’.)