Distell shareholders (like yours truly) may be forgiven for wondering why they fund the Nederburg Auction which benefits competing brands. Africa’s biggest retailer, the Shoprite/Checkers chain, offers 11 Auction wines for order in Die Burger today. Only two are from Nederburg, including the cheapest, the Eminence 2005. Seeing as though the Auction was started as an outlet for Edelkeur, it is failing.

Certainly the mothership has enough goodies of its own to tempt well heeled punters, as was confirmed by our weekly column in the City Press yesterday.

It’s strange that a company ultimately owned by the Rupert family gets away with such oudedoos and lazy marketing. After all, the Ruperts are masters of marketing.

The days of a patriarchal industry are long past so the Auction should take a good look in the mirror and ask for how much longer shareholders should fund such an elitist and largely irrelevant expense. It has been overtaken in the quality stakes by the Cape Winemakers Guild Auction which goes down on October 1 at Spier. Any bets the CWG take will far exceed Nederburg for a fraction of the cost to sponsor Nerdbank?