Faith in Veritas, papsaks, professorships and the family  
19 October 2006

You’d think that wine marketers would learn to be wary of staking too much on the results of wine competitions. If you’re going to say that ‘Veritas is by far the most reliable benchmark for quality and a double gold award gives credibility to your entire wine-range’, you’re being rather too optimistic that your winery is going to do as well in the next year’s line-up. Pieter Malan of Simonsig should be ruefully aware of this now, after letting Veritas use that statement in an advertising puff. For poor old Simonsig didn’t get a single double gold this year. It hasn’t been announced whether they’re going to act on their boundless faith in Veritas judges and perhaps withdraw some of their prestige wines from the market – two vintages of Tiara mustered only a silver and a bronze, and the youngest Kaapse Vonkel only got a bronze. By the winery's own admission this doesn't leave them with much credibility, does it?

Presumably it will be Nuy co-op that will now be trumpeting the virtues and skills of the Veritas panels, following the double gold medals to not only their well-established Muscadel, but also their semi-sweet Colombar. Rather recalls the good old days when it was Bon Vino that was regularly showered with gold.

On the other hand, Raka has been pretty consistent: for two years their Biography Shiraz 2004 has achieved double gold. I had it in my little mind that one wasn’t allowed to re-enter a wine that had already won a double gold, but clearly I must be wrong….

Perhaps Pieter Malan should monitor the Veritas judges more carefully before expatiating on their benchmarking skills. As usual, the competition uses large numbers of winemakers as judges, and, as usual, it doesn’t seem to do the wineries they come from much harm. Take Durbanville Hills, for example: one double gold and a few golds for its various Merlots. Who do you think was the convenor of the Merlot panel? One Martin Moore … haven't we heard that name before in connection with Durbanville Hills? Surely it's time for Veritas to do some of its own thinking about credibility.

Soft options

I don’t know if Nuy Colombar is available in a papsak, but it looks as though these containers are to be legislated out of existence – thus spoiling part of the torturous pleasure of  the large number of victims of our wine industry (by which I don’t mean those people who only get bronze at Veritas). Whether banning foill bags is a particularly useful way of dealing with endemic alcoholism is doubtful, of course, in the absence of adequate social action. But bag-in-the-box wine packaging is somehow supposed to be more respectable, so now these desperate creatures are going to have to not only pay for the containers wrapped around their beloved bags, but will also be put to the trouble of ripping away the cardboard to reveal the comfortingly familiar papsak within. Such ripping can already be observed (I’m told by people in the sad position of seeing such things) outside the shops and winery back-door sales outlets that thrive on the misery of cheap drunkenness.

Prof proof

Kader Asmal, chairperson of the new SA Wine Industry Council likes to be called ‘Professor’ which seems to me a trifle pompous outside of an academic context (but maybe it’s something that goes with the title, as the owner of Solms-Delta winery also seems to enjoy flashing his professorship about – though he is admittedly a somewhat more internationally eminent academic than Kader). Prof Kader has not insisted that his new organisation should have a website up and flourishing – perhaps surprisingly, given his well-established reluctance to miss any opportunity of offering his wisdom and charmingly gnome-like image to the world. But website there is none, while that of the Council’s predecessor, the Wine and Brandy Company serenely occupies its little corner of the ether, and has not yet announced its own demise or the emergence of Kader’s new vehicle for expressing his professorial eloquence.

Fathers and sons and valuable property

I admit to occasional doubts about family values – it does sometimes seem, for example, that statistics indicate we should be advising our children that they should really only talk to strangers, as the likeliest means of avoiding rape and other violence. But my tender old heart was warmed to hear that old Jannie Engelbrecht, after seeing his family’s grubby linen hung out in the Sunday press last year, has apparently patched things up with son Jean – and handed over to him the family farm Rust en Vrede, from which Jean dramatically walked away in terms of the legal settlement to the sordid family feud.

No news of whether Jannie’s little playmate Romi Boom, who was blamed by many for occasioning the bust-up (she’s merely a PhD rather than a professor, but no doubt with sundry other advantages), is still around, or whether Jean is being clasped to her bosom as well. (Do tell me if you know – I acquired some interest in Romi when our editor was sent  by mistake an email in which she was exchanging some notably sour views about Grape with the editor of WineLand.)

A friend of mine – would be a dearer friend were there a little less scepticism in his make-up – has suggested that perhaps Jannie decided to bring Jean back (along with winemaker Louis Strydom) for a reason other than natural paternal love: because he didn’t see why they should get away with not having to cope with the rumours and accusations of brettanomyces-taint in some of the R&V wines they left behind them. (The Veritas judges liked the wines pretty well, however, let it be said.)

The sceptical (or even cynical) might also be wondering whether Jean, now that he’s back in the family nest, has undertaken to get down to providing the next-generation heir to the estate.

Ah well, we all have our problems. Let’s have a squeeze of the good old papsak. Cheers.