Synchronicity strikes again. Having been blown away by the stunning Shiraz blend of Janno Briers-Louw called Eenzaamheid – Loneliness – at the Vineyard Hotel yesterday, I fire up my iPad to get my fix of the Weekend Financial Times which must have contributed more to the collapse of SA newspapers than termites and soccer moms. Only to read about Marina Keegan along with the rest of the world as its the most popular feature on the site.
Dead at 22 in a car wreck, she is breaking big posthumously with a PDF retrieved from her smashed up laptop (boyfriend fell asleep at the wheel, not DUI, ruling this post out of the ridiculous Brandhouse Responsible Drinking Media Awards which are more manipulated than Lotto). That book is called The Opposite of Loneliness.
“The Opposite of Loneliness would be her farewell to a brilliant student career at Yale. It was also a plea to her fellow graduates not to waste time and to ‘make something happen to this world’. Keegan wrote often in the first person plural, as if she were speaking not only for herself but a generation. ‘What we have to remember is that we can still do anything.’ ”
Janno supplies the liquid equivalent. Being located in the southern hemisphere, like water swirling down a plug hole or the hair patterns on a semi-chiskop, things get reversed. So rather than the opposite of loneliness, Janno deals with loneliness directly.
The farm name comes from its relative isolation from Cape Town and Janno’s wines benefit from distance from the grubby cynicism of the city that has seen boutique cellars mushroom in the Swartland and Franschhoek, selling Co-op wines at icon prices. Read the labels if you want to see why those erstwhile icons now taste kak. Volumes are up to 2 million litres in some cases. It’s a Chocolate Caper of note. No wonder the Shiraz Challenge of Shiraz SA gave them all the bum’s rush.
At least the Shiraz of the minute, the Mentors 2012, is only 20,000 litres, which should keep anorexic KWV shareholders happy at the upcoming AGM. At a reasonable wholesale price, this should translate to five bar at least. Enough for Marie biscuits and rooibos tea, all round and new sheep skins for the executive La-Z-Boy recliners. Confirming the lucrative profit potential when you focus on what’s in the bottle as KWV does, rather than spending all your money on marketing, as some brands do, assuming consumers don’t care. Well this one does, Reg.
