Gore Vidal’s Crayfish

SA winemakers can be broadly classified into two groups: those who surf and those who fish. The distinction is clear in their wines. Those beautifully balanced Sauvignon Blanc/Semillon blends from Cape Point Vineyards confirm that Duncan Savage is a surfing savant while the more laidback savoury flavours in Badenhorst Family Wines whites speak more to a yellowtail sizzling on the braii.

Adi preaching the parable of the crayfish

Adi preaching the parable of the crayfish

When it comes to Neptune’s constituency, there is a fair amount of hypocrisy around. When whales and dolphins commit mass suicide on beaches, punters rush into the surf in an attempt to tow then back out to sea. While with sardines and crayfish, the impulse is to grab a sterri-nappy bucket and start piling. In the case of crayfish, lids are not necessary as the crayfish at the bottom pull down any would-be escapees.

A metaphor for SA wine marketing deployed at the launch of the Swartland Independent (Sindy): it is far more satisfying to see your neighbour fail than succeed. Or as Gore Vidal extrapolated “every time a friend succeeds, a little part of me dies.”

From the outside, Sindy behaves like a marketing initiative aimed at spreading the message of the Swartland Revolution (quality through authenticity and oxidation), so the other crayfish scrambling to pull Sindy down would presumably be WOSA (the national generic marketing body), the Cape Winemakers Guild (featuring a couple of Sindy members), the Swartland Wine Route, other producer bodies like the Pinotage/Chenin Blanc/Sauvignon Blanc Interest Group and producers unable or unwilling to sign up to Sindy, mischievous wine commentators, twisted tweeters, abusive bloggers and the perpetually dyspeptic (of which there is no shortage).

Or is the crayfish correlate a canny mechanism to suspend discussion, invoking “national interest” to short circuit critical debate? The National Party government of the old SA tried that one and it didn’t work, either.

As for crayfish, they are a smart choice for Sindy symbol as the French symbolist poet Gérard de Nerval had a pet lobster named Thibault which he took for walks in the Palais Royal on a leash of blue silk. As he remarked “”Why should a lobster be any more ridiculous than a dog? I have a liking for lobsters. They are peaceful, serious creatures. They know the secrets of the sea, they don’t bark, and they don’t gnaw upon one’s monadic privacy like dogs do.” Cellar crayfish, rather than cellar collies, have a lot of legs.