In the run up to the launch of the Platanna sighted wine guide next week, the pocket full of frogs who run the guide are making a concerted effort to drum up interest in the face of declining sales and a reduced print run. Here are ten reasons not to be seduced by vinous visualizers.
- Tasting is sighted. There can be no objectivity.
- Save the trees and the tree frogs who call them home. Dead tree media is so passé.
- Platanna is owned by Standard Bank and what are banksters doing owning wine guides anyway? Maybe reducing bank charges, playing computer Solitaire and ceasing to redline entire suburbs for denial of mortgages would be a better use of their time.
- The average age of the tasting panel makes Methuselah look like a laaitjie.
- The tasting panel does not reflect the demographic of the customers of Standard Bank.
- Platanna is controlled by Reg Lascaris who owns some leading wine brands. In fact his Boekenhoutskloof was Platanna Winery of the Year in 2012. Coincidence? Diners chairman Richard Irvine told me Reg played a key role in the acquisition of the guide last year. Whatever happened to corporate governance?
- Platanna is a cosy cottage industry with tasters paying back favours to their employers, as seems to happen with Sauvignon Blanc. One of the tasters (a wine importer) plays Bacchus in a bow-tie for a major supermarket chain. Another chooses wines for another supermarket chain, blind. How does that work?
- Platanna is cynically starting to rate brandy this year. Why now? What place does a spirit have in an annual wine guide when no vintage or distilling date declaration is carried on the label? Who’s zoomin who as Aretha Franklin asked?
- The new publisher is married into a five star wine family.
- Previous editions have time and again demonstrated prejudice to supermarket wines and those produced on the wrong side of the mountain. This prejudice has been exposed by numerous examples of “the same wine” getting wildly different ratings, depending on the label. Ask Alan Pick for an example.
