Baby Steps for SA Wine Tourism

While SA wine apparatchiks run around the country briefing on Vindaba, next year’s all singing, all dancing wine tourism conference at the Cape Town International Conference Centre, wine tourism itself continues apace. All this “busy, busy” activity reminds me of the Roman general who wrote to Caesar over two millennia ago “If we don’t stop having all these meetings, we’ll lose the empire.” Landbouweekblad yesterday quoted Prof. Nick Vink, chairman of the department of agricultural economics at the University of Stellenbosch, that exports to England, Sweden and Germany are down 44%, 15% and 20% respectively. Quick, let’s have a meeting.

Last night, I met a six pack of Argentinean tourism journalists in the Michelle Obama suite of the Table Bay Hotel at the Waterfront. Flown to SA by the national airline, I accidentally briefed them on the Rainbow’s End Cabernet Franc 2009, Iona Sauvignon Blanc 2011 and the Krone Rosé, three wines chosen by the Table Bay to showcase SA wine.

Argentinean journalists at the Table Bay last night

Argentinean journalists at the Table Bay last night

Cintia Colangelo and Berenice Schmittendorf (above) thought the Rainbow’s End especially good while I wondered what Vindaba were up to and whether they care about SA wine tourism or the concept of a conference next year. Probably having a meeting on the missing pot of gold…

But let’s not be cynical but rather hope that the Argentinean six are invited to today’s Great Wine Capitals slap-up feed at La Motte and that it’s not another replay of the Wine Enthusiast journo dining in Franschhoek with a well paid and well padded apparatchik (nicknamed SirCumference) on the very evening the Cape Winemakers Guild put on three dinners to showcase their auction wines at the Test Kitchen, Jordan and Cassia Restaurants!