While our own much loved Sunday Times becomes less and less interested in wine (was it last week or the week before that there was nothing at all about vino?) the British weekly The Spectator is moving in the opposite direction. Bruce Anderson pops up with a full page column while Simon Hoggart runs the 2/3-page Spectator Mini-Bar. Which last week reported that Cape Point Vineyards winemaker Duncan Savage was “widely regarded as the leading white wine maker in South Africa” before lifting off in flights of hairy hyperbole about Duncan’s CPV Sauvignon Blanc 2010.

Duncan the Great

“A tremendous bold fruit-sodden flavour, the opposite of real flinty Sauvignons. But it also has elegance and grace. Reduced by £36 a case to a mere £11.95.” That said, it is still the most expensive of the four wines Si selected. So who said that SA populates the lowest price points? WOSA had better think up another excuse for the serial underperformance of SA wine in Blighty, sharpish.

The “leading white wine maker” claim will upset a few Riedels. Sure Duncs is a master of the simplicity that makes great Sauvignon, but André van Rensburg has been doing that for longer at Vergelegen. And David Finlayson has been making kick-ass Chardonnay for wonks for yonks. And don’t let me even start on the Swartland superstars! Still chapeaus off to Duncan although he does need to tell Si that Cape Point is now its own ward and banging on about Constantia, as he does, is not what the marketing department ordered.