Yesterday’s downgrade of the credit ratings of Standard Bank, FirstRand, Nedbank and Absa by Moody’s (with further cuts threatened) is worse than a corked bottle to SA wine impresarios as the Big Four are hugely exposed to SA wine competitions. How will bank managers be able to pressure delinquent debtors when they lavish largesse on frivolous diversions such as the Platter wine label guide (owned by Standard through their Diners Club subsidiary), Top Ten Sauvignon Challenge (FNB), Winex (FirstRand), CWG Auction (Nedbank), Top Ten Pinotage (Absa) and many other sideshows.

On Friday Absa’s Africa chief Craig Bond (below) was giving it welly at an awards lunch in Oke City that started at 11am with the mains served at 2.30pm. With banks under pressure, are whole day lunches really sustainable? And will Standard again schedule a board meeting in Cape Town so directors can buy wine at Reg Lascaris’s Boekenhoutskloof (surely attend the Diners Club Winemaker of the Year blow out at the toniest address in Franschhoek, ed?)

African Bank went bang for R17 billion last week and they were not even in the wine sponsorship game.

The announcement on April Fool’s day of a Standard Bank sponsorship of a Top Ten Chenin Competition shows how tinny are the ears of SA bankers. Judges flown in from the UK, berthed at Delaire Graff, the ritziest billet in the Winelands, reminds of the Roman Emperor Nero fiddling while his capital went up in flames. Standard Bank shareholders will be worried about their capital when they survey serried ranks of unsold Platter wine label guides as traditional retailers like Ultra Liquors give the publication a wide berth due to it’s discredited sighted reviewing methodology.