“Every pot has its lid” as they SA in richly idiomatic Afrikaans and the same applies to wine competitions. When Cape Jazz Shiraz was launched at the inaugural oesfees on Solms-Delta farm in Franschhoek three years ago, the BBC shoved a microphone in my cakehole and asked for a rating. “What would you score Hamlet?” was my rejoinder, hoping to highlight the ridiculousness of assigning numerical ratings to cultural artifacts. But alas, I think that went above his fire-making place, to appropriate another Afrikaans idiom. Of course the launch was crawling with sighted specialists (who all buzzed off back to Kenilworth before Auntie Grietjie started keening and Oom Hannes Coetzee reached for his guitar and spoon) so this debasing of wine was not a BBC idea, but rather a bad habit SA wine needs to grow out of.

Cape Jazz Shiraz found its own lid in Las Vegas last month where it won one of only two double gold medals at the 67th annual Wine and Spirits Wholesalers Association conference, the biggest gathering of wholesalers in America. Those vinous Vegans sure know a lot about wine as Giulio Bertrand’s Morgenster Lourens River Valley won gold while his flagship estate blend had to settle for silver, a reversal of precedence some commentators had long thought appropriate, especially when tasting blind. If you taste sighted, focus on the price tag and the towering elegance of Mr. Lourens, his River and Valley becomes even more convincing.

Showing the Cape Jazz Shiraz in Las Vegas was a stroke of genius on the part of partners Mark Solms and Richard Astor as Las Vegas is the wildly beating heart of American hedonism. British Airways realized this, so they plucked the Cape’s best food writer, Graham Howe, out of the endless round of wine launch lunches and flew him “horizontal class” to the set of Leaving Las Vegas, Nicholas Cage’s best movie. BA missed a trick though, as instead of serving Graham “Napa Zinfandel, Chilean Carmenere and Cab Franc, native Spanish varieties and Clare Valley Rhine Riesling” on the flights, they should have popped a bottle of Cape Jazz Shiraz. Poor Graham was reduced to quoting reviews of SA wines in the magazines (Spectator, Business Traveler) in Business Class; a poor substitute for the real thing.