Talking of Mozart and other great writers
19 December 2006

Just because people can’t write good books on wine and terroir doesn’t mean they can’t come up with some truly arresting words and concepts on the right occasion. As when Elmarie Swart and Izac Smit recently produced a PR handout to announce that their book has won what appears to be some sort of Chinese cookery book award. In just their opening sentence, our prizewinning authors adroitly reveal all the literary and conceptual skills at their disposal. I must quote it for you, in case you haven’t seen it (or in case you have and have been trying to forget):

“More than 50 centuries ago the art of writing was first invented and great masters like Shakespear, Mozart and Enstein praticed this art with phenomenal success.”

Indeed! How true! one is forced to gasp. (Even if we more journeyman hacks have to take Mozart’s phenomenal literary genius on trust, and even we if spell Shakespeare with an e on the end, and think that the verb ‘practise’ should have an s before the e – not to mention a c before the t. Perhaps Shaxsper et al had spell-checks on their computers 50 centuries ago.) I did wonder if perhaps the one reference in their adumbration of great masters should have been to Einstein rather than Enstein, but no, Albert Einstein was a scientist rather than a writer, so I’m sure the honour of being cited by these heirs to a great tradition must go to Jakob Enstein, the great Lithuanian Talmudic scholar of the nineteenth century, famous throughout the shtetls of Dzisna district for his sense of fun and the quality of his prose.

Congratulations are clearly in order to Swart and Smit, these latter-day heirs of Shakespeare, and we must wish them well for the finals of the awards in Beijing. (It seems the competition isn’t quite important enough to have its own website, so I can’t tell you more.) We can be proud in our little corner of Africa that the world recognises our own great masters. For even if some of us have doubts about the quality of the content of their little book, we must all surely agree that when it comes to writing in English about wine, Swart and Smit do indeed approach the lofty standards of Mozart.

[See second comment at end for correction.]

Talking of writing about wine, I was most intrigued to see Neil Pendock’s gleeful exposé, in his Sunday Times column, of a terrible anomaly in the current Platter Guide, where the same wine had been scored and described differently when tasted by different people. Yes! Can you credit it! It’s a pretty shocking and sad thing, one must admit – one has grown so used to the absurd results that come from blind tasting competitions that one doesn’t expect to see such things from sighted tastings. Why didn’t the taster of the Pick’s Pick version, (or the editor), knowing that the wine came from Jordan, simply check that there was some sort of plausible correspondence? This sort of integrity, of leaving different tasters to their own inadequate opinions, is really not in order.

So Neil was quite right to intimate that it amounts to a scandal. The aspect that intrigues me, though, is why the egregious Mr Pick chose to whinge to Neil about being shortchanged as he believes he was? Why didn’t he complain to the editor of Platter? And why did our Neil feel obliged to go against his no doubtly dearly held principles of sound journalistic practice – and of common courtesy – by not approaching the same editor for some comment before scurrying to print? Strikes me as the whole process has a little more to do with vendetta than with devotion to the truth.

Talking of Jordan – have you seen the advertisements that its amiable winemakers, Kathy and Gary, have been appearing in for one of the banks in recent months? I have heard that Gary, as chair of the Cape Winemakers Guild (yes, I also don’t like the missing apostrophe), has on occasions encouraged his fellow members to always acknowledge the bank that sponsors their auction. It’s a quite different bank from the one he himself advertises … Rumours persist of some irritation amongst members about this trifling anomaly.

And talking of the CWG, you’d think, wouldn’t you - now that the Auction seems to be the main reason for the organisation’s existence –  that they could have put up the results of the 2006 Auction on their website by now, more than two months later? I know they haven’t because I was prowling about there, wondering when the next AGM is going to be held and, so, how much time they still have to work out a way of not sacking Ross Gower…. You might remember that they proudly announced earlier this year that a winemaker member who didn’t make the auction cut for three years in succession is liable to be kicked out. As far as my arithmetic can tell, Ross is the only one due for the chop, and I’m willing to make a small bet that it won’t happen. But, gosh, I’ve been wrong before; once, for example ... in 1957 I think it was….

COMMENTS

From Neil Pendock:
Pleased to see I’ve been upgraded from a columnette to a column! On the question of approaching the Platter editor for comment, thought the winemaker would be more useful. On the subject of comments, how does the Platter collective (and you as their Paladin) respond to the possibility of Wither Hills-style cuvees being submitted to the guide? Why not buy your samples, like the readers who buy the guide? It’ll certainly be my new year’s resolution for 2007.