Auction times 25 January 2006

+ comment at end

It’s taken some weeks for me to drag my weary old bones into yet another new year, but here we are, and I wish you well….

I can’t say that I’m much interested in the wines going on the Nederburg Auction – or not. But one in the latter category interested me this year: no sauvignon blanc from Warwick, unlike last year when it reached an outrageous price thanks to the efforts of the Warwick MD. Unless it was rejected by the tasting panel this year, was it Mike Ratcliffe’s good taste keeping it out? Or perhaps a quiet word from the Auction organisers did the trick – or even a directive from mum Norma, still holding many strings at the home place, and seriously displeased with her portly little boy last year.

Talking of the feisty Norma, I have heard that the Winemakers Guild has finally realised that she has not been the Warwick winemaker for quite some time, and have shunted her into ‘honorary’ membership (presumably loath to get entirely rid of their one female member).

I do see that the indefatigable Mike has, though, worked his way onto a prominent position at the upcoming Wines of South Africa international marketing bash. Strange perhaps that Wosa should be pleased with him, given that he has gone quite against the spirit of Wosa’s terroir-and-diversity push by downplaying the origins of the Warwick wines, whose labels no longer include the name of the ward, Simonsberg, but only that of the much larger Stellenbosch district.

Ditching Dave

One of the names that many people associate with the Nederburg Auction is undoubtedly that of dear old Dave Hughes (well, he’s nearly as old as I am, though admittedly in rather better shape). After all, he’s been intimately and deeply involved in the auction since its inception. Well, Distell has a new crowd in charge (partly explaining why last year’s event was rather one to forget, at least from the social point of view), and they didn’t seem to have much use for Dave this year: I’d imagine he was a trifle surprised, and a little less than chuffed, when he received the standard invitation to attend as a guest the media preview tasting – an occasion he’s hosted for as long as anyone can remember. Since then, it seems, the Auction organisers did decide that it would be worthwhile to pull him in to do this and a few other odd jobs for them. Unlikely that the decision was made on sentimental grounds, however, or anything silly like that – we’re talking, after all, of people that can sack someone after 31 years good service, without even the courtesy of a phone call or a little note telling him he was no longer wanted (let along a gold watch!).

In a similar display of big-business charm, chef Peter Goffe-Wood – closely consulted about the Auction catering for a few years now – was also sacked, with not even a phonecall telling him his services would no longer be required. Distell recently conducted a survey amongst media people and others to find out what they needed to do to improve their image. I’ll tell them for free that trying to behave with a bit of basic decency to those that have worked for you wouldn’t be a bad start….

Presumably Distell also didn’t get round to informing their last-year’s gavel-wielder for the charity auction that he was no longer wanted – but as his performance was generally thought to have been pretty dismal, he can’t have been expecting to hear their friendly inviting tones again this year.

Pink and pretty is for girls

Mental connections come slowly these days, and at first while I was browsing through the latest Wine mag, looking at the photos of Spier winemaker  Eleonor Visser charmingly drifting along an avenue of oaks in a diaphanous white evening dress, I was wondering what was vaguely reminiscent about it. Ah, of course – when Ronell Wiid won the Winemaker of the Year Award a few years back, this was again how Wine thought it best to celebrate a woman winemaker achieving something in what remains a largely male-dominated world: take her out of the cellar, exchange the workclothes for something to show off her figure, and there she implicitly is – back where she should be, looking well-groomed and pretty and not really as though she ever did the same sort of work as the boys, let alone rather well.

Then you’re in a good position to call the article something like ‘Female intuition’, and get tickled because the judges had called the wine ‘shy’ and ‘delicate’ and ‘understated’ – clearly it could only have been made by a one of those sweet little things known affectionately as women! Lord knows how Helen Turley in California manages to be the champ at producing huge, tannic and alcoholic blockbusters.

I suppose it’s lucky that women don’t usually get these awards, otherwise Wine would either have to get a little more sophisticated, or think of some other way of representing a successful woman winemaker. This latest instance even counts as a little lacking in imagination in fitting into the stereotypes – especially when one considers the stunning originality of the magazine’s Valentine’s  Day cover: red roses and pink champagne. However did they come up with that concept, I wonder? (It must also remain a puzzle why they chose to portray, and offer as a prize, the champagne that got virtually the lowest rating of the French bubblies in their tasting.)

The magazine’s art director and editorial staff, one imagines, are not going to have much trouble dusting off their stereotypes when they are one day able to announce the first black winemaker of, say, the Shiraz Challenge. I can see it already: ‘A great sense of rhythm!’ could be a suitable title, the wine would be described as ‘big, strong and very, very dark’; to accompany a picture of the loin-clothed winemaker clutching shield and assegai (if it’s a man, that is ­– I can’t bear to think of how they’ll accommodate a double stereotype if it’s a woman).

Viva fynbos!

Back on the subject of Wosa’s biodiversity kick: some irreverent person (who’d better be nameless, I think) remarked to me the other day how much easier life would be if the grapevine was declared an invasive plant and banished from the Cape  – leaving us to drink French, Italian and Spanish wine with an easy conscience.... How could I agree to that? One wouldn’t recognise Stellenbosch and Franschhoek and Constantia if they pulled out all the herbicided rows of vines and left it all to the hideous bloody proteas and those scrubby little grey-brown indigenous plants….

The Widow replies:

I know I'm not a real journalist but (or therefore?) I do try my hardest to get things right. In fact, I have it on pretty good authority that:

- the first Dave knew about him not being involved in the Gauteng tasting was when the person presenting the tasting asked him for notes. Only subsequently did Dave receive a note from you that costs were being cut, and that therefore he was not being used.

- Dave received from the PR person involved in the Cape Town tasting the same email that other journalists got, inviting him to put the date of the tasting in his diary so that he could be sure of attending (as a taster!). Only subsequently, only at a very late stage, was he asked to present the tasting.

Clearly, this demonstrates the correctness of asserting that, after the selection of the wines, the intention was that Dave was to be largely dispensed with; he was not fully involved in the planning as he had been in previous years, and was only brought in for a few tasks late in the day – as I said. The editor and I are satisfied that this is the case. As to Peter Goffe-Wood, it is possible that my source was mistaken – if so I apologise for suggesting that it rather fitted a behavioural pattern.
 

From Joanne Simon of Wine magazine:
Frilly dresses, red roses, pink bubbly - we thought such things would appeal to a romantic old soul like the widow as she remembers her dearly departed on Valentine's Day. She surely can't deny that Laurent-Perrier is sexy, can she? (Though it is gratifying to learn that she takes Wine magazine ratings so seriously...)