Mikey snarls again
3 May 2006
Somewhat more
elderly fans of Michael Fridjhon might, like I do, rather regret the benign
turn his writing has taken in recent years (it’s parenthood, I suspect,
that’s softened him up: a bit late for me to try the same thing, I suppose).
And it’s not just his writing that’s more gentle – he even lets Jo’burg
retailer Carrie Adams get away with addressing him as ‘Mikey’; I wouldn’t
dare do that even at a distance of a thousand kilometres (except when
quoting, of course)….
So I perked up
a little when seeing in Mr Fridjhon’s latest
Business Day column his
excoriation of ‘cynics’ who scoff at the results of wine competitions. No
specificities, but it’s not too difficult to guess at whom his anger is
launched, when you think of the sort of thing Neil Pendock has been writing
of late as he builds his populist campaign (Neil seems set on becoming a
sort of Malcolm Gluck for South Africa), and when you notice that Neil’s
name is glaringly missing from the list of judges for the Trophy Wine Show,
on which he’s been a fixture from the start.
Parker points the way
I was thinking
just recently, in my own uncynical fashion, about such things as wine
ratings. Sales of the new Anwilka have been spectacular, I’m told, since
Robert Parker made some very kind remarks about the wine. Poor Lowell Jooste
of Klein Constantia and his bordelais pals! – they were, after all, trying
to make a respectable wine. Partner Bruno Prats was even overheard at the
Anwilka launch sneering slightly at what has happened at Cos d’Estournel,
the grand domaine he once controlled: ‘the wine’s been Parkerised’, he said
rather sadly). So he helps out at Anwilka – and Parker approves of the
stuff. Never mind, Anwilka’s really not as bad as all that. No doubt the
soaring sales will console the producers for having made a wine that Parker
approves of.
Actually, the
way the American pope of pompous wines came to give his magisterial
judgement does make me feel more kindly than I usually do about blind
tasting. Imagine: ‘Hiya Bob’, says the fancy dealer in Bordeaux wines to his
powerful friend; ‘try this great South African wine we’re handling – it’s
been helped along by two of the fanciest names in Bordeaux. Do give us your
unprejudiced opinion!’
Yes, well. But
then, on the other hand, I see that the local Wine mag panel
considers Anwilka to be pretty poor stuff. Tasting blind, they have just
given it two-and-a-half stars (along with Rustenburg’s John X Merriman). Oh
boy, they really do sometimes taste blind at these things – do the mag's
tasters perhaps also use clothes pegs on their noses to avoid being
prejudiced by such things as aromas and flavour?
Little nuances
Those strange people who are interested in terroir and
suchlike abstrusities, and the even stranger ones who regard sauvignon blanc
as being an interesting grape variety, might have noticed in a
recent Grape tasting that
the two new sauvignons from Lomond apparently exhibit precisely opposite
characters from the ones their labels declare them to have: the Lomond
Sugarbush was supposed to be ‘tropical’, but was actually ‘herbaceous’; and
vice versa for the Lomond Pincushion.
Turns out the marketers (Distell’s Cape Legends) had switched
their original decision on naming the two wines. Trouble is, they neglected
to tell the people in the cellar, so the herbaceous stuff ended up in
Sugarbush bottles (described on the label as tropical, remember) and the
tropical fruit wine was bottled under the Pincushion label, described as
herbaceous. A bit complicated to follow, I know, but these little details
are important when you are grandly trying to demonstrate differences in
terroir – even if the whole project is rendered rather laughable by
incompetence in big-company communication.
Trouble is, they don’t seem to have informed Dave Mostert, a
property developer who’s a partner in the project. Or else he doesn’t know
much about wine and/or public relations. He will bring out all his best
pomposity and arrogance in denying the labelling problem. Try asking him why
the two wines show precisely the opposite characteristics from what the
labels promise. It’s simply because, says Dave, they have totally swopped
their characters since bottling. Yes, Dave. That’s what terroir is all
about, isn’t it, these little nuances of flavour that the viticulturists and
winemakers struggle so hard to preserve?
Cars
and wine
It would be
curmudgeonly of me (and we couldn’t have that, could we?) if I didn’t extend
my welcome to the new Afrikaans wine and food magazine Fynproe, from
the team that gives us WineLand/Wynboer. Unless I’m persuaded
otherwise I’ll presume that it too sells its cover and some of its editorial
space as unacknowledged advertisement. Can’t approve of that, of course, but
how nice that there are now two wine magazines in the world (WineLand
being the other) carrying reviews of motor cars (does someone value their
motoring-journalist freebies or what?)….
Talking of motoring
journalists, there has been quite a little flurry about that Brit who had
some nasty things to say about SA wine. It strikes me that the response has
been rather excessive and more than a little indicative of a rather
provincial attitude on our part. Why should anyone in the wine industry care
what a writer about cars says about wine? Would we expect the Brits to get
very agitated if the Fynproe car-critic wrote rudely about the
quality of British cars?
