The scrum for a glass of first growth at the Taj last night was worse than anything seen at WineX or Juliet Cullinan. I asked one punter what she was tasting and she had no idea. Another was taking smart phone instagrams of the label of a Petrus 2001. Is this what passes for vino porn?

The occasion was the launch of SA’s most exclusive wine list by The World of First Growths. While label drinkers mobbed the Haut Brion 88 I made the pleasant acquaintance of David Trafford’s Elevation 2008 on a table with queue length zero. I must say I preferred it to the Ho Bryan when I eventually got to taste it. Wonder what Samuel Pepys would have made of it.

My own first growths were the Delaire Graff Laurence Graff 2009 and the Vergelegen Schaapenberg 2013, a Sauvignon Blanc picked by neither FNB nor Veritas but better than any I’ll wager. So, disillusioned as I am by tasting tourneys, should I resign from those panels I’m on?

Of course not. The problem with the panels is not the tasting but the crazy objective of describing a wine by a number rather than a sentence. Judging the ABSA Top Twenty Pinotages, we supplied no scores but rather a description of each wine we fancied. Even better would be to associate instagrams with each selection to escape the hassle of being lost in translation. Something for tomorrow. Cheers, lekker slaap and sweet dreams (below).