The news that the International Wine & Spirit Competition is to judge SA entries locally exploded like a bomb from a Libyan Air Force Mirage on the SA spittoon this morning. Come again? Surely the only reason SA producers pay the outrageous entrance fees and shipping costs for foreign competitions is to have their wines assessed by international palates and then hopefully bought by Tesco and Waitrose? Will the mythical international palates be flown to SA or will we have to suffer yet another local panel, already damned late last year by British Master of Wine Remington Norman who called SA tasting panels “one of the biggest challenges facing SA wine.”

That there is a disconnect between international and local palates was demonstrated in January at the Chenin Challenge when another MW, Cathy van Zyl, correlated at an impressive -0.77 with panel chair Michael Fridjhon, who also owns the Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show. Sure two judges can disagree on the odd wine, but when there is such disagreement over all the top wines, confusion reigns worse than in the Tripoli town council.

SA wine is more susceptible to Cultural Cringe than Phylloxera, and it will be a fascinating sideshow indeed to watch this one pan out.