Banking on Brandy

With bankers scrambling to revalue asset classes in the wake of the recent sub-prime snafu, liquid assets are proving to be better investments than golf courses in Lagos and options on single stock futures on their JSE listed property developers, as Nedbank will tell you. So the Good Value Guru enthusiastically RSVP’d to Standard Bank’s kind invitation to their Brandy Festival last night at the Sandton Sun. The festival was previously known as Good-Life, which it clearly ain’t for bankers at the minute when the chairman’s golden handshake makes first page news in Business Day.

Bring your own shaker this year

Bring your own shaker this year

The GVG’s schnozzle for savings lead him straight to Oude Molen, a distillery which sounds like an episode of The League of Gentlemen as everyone is called “Dave.” But two gems jumped out of the glass: a marvelously intricate Solera brandy (think Sherry without castanets and old ladies lisping around the place) at a distillery price of around R200 a bottle – a steal, as the oldest component is over eight years. Then there are 700 bottles from a single cask called René. Please don’t listen to The Four Tops and their sixties hit Just Walk Away Renee – this delicate beauty is certainly worth following back home and the R240 a bottle price tag is a brandy bargain and the best offer you’ll get from a banker for a while.

Missing this year were KWV’s EMO cocktail mixers with dilated pupils, flairing to make Tom Cruise look like a big girl’s blouse. In their place, the whole senior of executive of Distell appeared: Jan, Smartie, Malcolm and Johan plus those glamorous sisters of spirit Siobhan Thompson and Caroline Snyman. No wonder brandy exports are up 225% from 236K litres in 2008 to 532K last year. With one litre of brandy made from five litres of wine, that’s over 2.5 million litres of wine equivalent.