SA producers will be disappointed by the coverage leading UK wine pundit Jancis Robinson gave to Cape Wine Europe 2011 in the Weekend Financial Times. Chris and Andrea Mullineux and GT Ferreira will be doubly disappointed. For instead of a compendium of sharp tasting notes and reflections on SA wines, we get a mishmash of reflections on August’s controversial Humran Rights Watch Report that Jancis thought appeared last month. For the tasting notes, you need to subscribe to Jancis’s pricey Purple Pages, making the FT a pimp for her PPs. After paying R40 for the pink one, it’s a bit of a cheek.
The internet version is a better deal as its free and her laundry list, chopped down to seven recommendations in the pink one, is twice as long on the web. Wines deleted from the dead tree rendition were:
Mullineux, Kloof Street Chenin Blanc 2011 Swartland
Mullineux white 2010 Swartland
Mullineux Syrah 2009 Swartland
Mullineux, Schist Syrah 2010 Swartland
Mullineux, Granite Syrah 2010 Swartland
Mullineux, Straw Wine 2010 Swartland
Tokara, Director’s Reserve White Sauvignon/Semillon 2010 Stellenbosch
six wines from Chris & Andre and one from GT. It’s like Wikileaks all over again, when sensitive information was redacted. Did Julia Assange MW censor GT and the Mullies? With six wines in the top 14, you’d expect a couple in the printed version, even if some of the Magnificent Mullies were reds!
The whole story looks sabotaged with plenty of unforced and uncharacteristic errors. Andries Burger does not “run Paul Cluver” unless you’re talking mountain bikes and can it be true that “barely 100 producers were represented” when the exhibition brochure lists 113 stands, some with more than one producer? Organizers WOSA (Wines of SA, the exporters’ mouthpiece) will prefer the “vast generic tasting” bit.
Although quite why the event was called Cape Wine Europe is a mystery as WOSA imported privileged palates from North America while Orange River Cellars were there in full force from a different, more northerly Cape, with not a Kalahari faerie circle, meerkat or biltong rose on the lavish backdrops. The Orange oompies felt unloved.
Funky Marc Kent received an uncharacteristic sideswipe via the comment “of course he cannot help mentioning the Mexican vineyard workers on whom the California wine industry is utterly dependent.” Which is a bit like the spear tackle that got Sam Warburton sent off last week.
But the most bizarre comment comes at the end. “There are some good reds, but too many red wine vines continue to be affected by leafroll virus. Perhaps if every farm cleaned up its employment policy, the mealy bugs that spread the leafroll would pack their bags and leave.” Huh? So is it back to the medieval days of yore when making a sign of the cross over food fallen to the floor would disinfect it?
