Absences, presences, scoring freebies,
and a joke
21 November 2006
Take us
to our leader!
If Kader Asmal, known to his friends and admirers as
‘Professor’, or, even more simply, ‘Sir’, wants to cultivate more of these
amongst the wine fraternity, we must hope that he doesn’t make a habit of
not turning up at functions at which he is the star turn. This happened
recently at probably his first scheduled public appearance as chair of the
SA Wine Council, when he was due to help in the launching of a wine tourism
smart card. It was the afternoon that the ANC had summoned all its MPs to
come and pass the Civil Unions bill, so presumably those were the higher
orders he was obeying when he left the party in the lurch. Those among the
audience who weren’t gays wanting to get married were reportedly a little
peeved at being jilted – to the point of being willing to entertain rumours
that the Professor actually prefers whiskey – quite a lot of it.
Flying
high
It was a different lot who didn’t turn up at the SAA bash to
announce their wine list awards in Cape Town a few weeks back: the
journalists. As a result of the combination of few invitations and even fewer acceptances,
home-town hacks were distinguished by their absence. Then, as a fiendish way of
getting back at the journalists, it seems that SAA decided not to send out
any press releases afterwards. That’ll make them sorry, the organisers
perhaps thought! Or is this ascription of devious stupidity rather
over-generous and really it was just a bit more of the incompetence that
tends to be the hallmark of SAA’s relationship with wine?
But at least SAA eventually managed to get some local judges
to sample the wines, after being turned down by quite a number who didn’t
quite agree with the organisers that the honour of participation was enough
to compensate for the missing charms of a little cheque. It seems that it’s
only Veritas that can rely on free local judges – but seeing most of them
are winemakers coming to judge their own wines, in time paid for by their
wineries, that’s not entirely surprising.
Anyway the SAA party apparently was great fun – at least
according to Neil Pendock in his enthusiastic wine.co.za blog and his Sunday
Times columnette, in both of which places it brought him out in a rash of
clichés (some of them the same ones). All were ‘kept in stitches’ by a
speaker who replaced a ‘no-show bigwig’, some of whose ‘gems’ Neil repeats
in his blog … and in his Sunday Times piece. Neil and Juliet Cullinan, both
come down to the provinces all the way from the big city up North, were there to represent the press –
although Juliet, he kindly says, is actually ‘the Queen
of SA wine shows’ (whether Juliet reciprocates the thought in some form,
I’m not sure). Perhaps Neil is tactfully trying to distract Juliet from
writing – worried for his friend’s safety, it could be, fearing that if she
were the Queen of wine-writing it would be enough to turn us all republican,
if not regicidal.
Excelling in obscurity
As an example
of Juliet’s skills in this direction, consider an email she favoured us
with recently, mysteriously headed ‘One flavour, one code, one secret’. This
was terribly and cleverly tantalising, so I read on (not something I always
do when realising that Juliet has been putting finger to keyboard again). Juliet is, she tells us, notably
talented at describing wines: ‘As a wine taster, I excel in this obscure use
of the English language, yet always aim to offer something new, modern and
enlightening in the art of tasting the vine.’ Oh sorry, she’s vine-tasting,
not wine-tasting, but still.
She continues:
My memories of life are filled with images, aromas, and
textures which made the concept of describing grape varieties in a visual
format seemed an obvious way to illustrate the specific flavour profiles of
each grape. Describing how one grape variety is different from another is
an art, and that is just what I made it.
Having analysed the grape personalities, I designed a wine
glass filled with the ingredients conveying each flavour profile. Grape
flavours are set in emulsion and visually easy to see the aroma.
Because this
sounded so wonderful, especially if you think that wine simply tastes of
liquidised grapes, I asked some other recipients if they could enlighten me
as to what it all could possibly mean. They couldn’t. Strangely, not
everyone was as enthusiastic as I am about the advantages of setting some
grape flavours in emulsion. But we did all admiringly agree with Juliet’s
assessment of her mastery of the ‘obscure use of the English language’.
18/20 points for hospitality
A thought of
Neil’s came in for some international attention recently, in no less than
the newsletter of the British Circle of Winewriters. A columnist there is
convinced that ‘Mr Pendock has set out the basis for a whole new approach to
critical wine-tasting’. Neil had written you see, that Brit winewriter Tim
Atkin had chosen only one SA brand in his Top 36 Wine for Summer – ‘despite
two WOSA-funded trips so far this year and hospitality galore’. As the
admiring Brit writer remarked, this ‘despite’ bit suggests endorsement of an
approach that ‘would revolutionise the way wine critics work’: ‘wines should
be assessed on the basis of hospitality received’.
Revolutionise?
Well, I can think of a few wine and food journalists who already work quite
happily according to this methodology.
(And do you think Brian Berkman got quite
so obese only on food that he’d paid for? He does point out, of course, that
his restaurant review visits are unannounced and paid for – but at that size
can one be anonymous,
one wonders?)
A joke
I take my
responsibilities seriously, and have never tried for laughs in my column, as
you will know. (My dear husband thought I was sometimes too high-minded for
my own good. ‘Lighten up, dear’, I remember his saying – and somehow it
seemed the least I could do in his memory to do just that after he went to
what he hoped would be a better place, his liver leading the way.) But the
following joke was sent to me by a favourite person, and though I have my
doubts that she wasn’t just trying to turn my attention away from her press
releases about her eminent client, the story contains such a profound truth that I
am allowing it to do just that. (Thanks, Alex.) It’s an American story:
Sally was driving home from a business trip in Northern
Arizona when she saw an elderly Navajo woman walking on the side of the
road. As the trip was a long and tedious one, she stopped the car and
offered her a lift. With a silent nod of thanks, the woman got into the car.
Resuming the journey, Sally tried to make some small talk,
But the Navajo woman just sat silently, looking intently at everything. At
last she noticed a brown bag on the seat next to Sally. She asked: ‘What in
bag?’
‘Oh’, said Sally. ‘It's a bottle of wine. I got it for my
husband.’
The Navajo woman was silent for another moment or two. Then
she spoke, with all the wisdom of an elder and of deep experience: ‘A good
trade....’
