An inspiring feature in the Speccie this week on someone who paid R4.5 million to have lunch with Warren Buffet. Guy Spier, a name to conjure with as Spier is Dick Enthoven’s Disneyland of Wine outside Oak City. An appellation so diffuse that the annual Stellenbosch Wine Festival now features wines made from grapes not even grown in the appellation. A celebration of terroir this is clearly NOT.

Guy’s big breakthrough came when he realized that the efficient market hypothesis was all hogwash. Stock markets do not reflect all the information available about a stock in its price. In SA, where inside trading is a lucrative way of life for high fliers, it never has been true.

Guy is a value investor, trolling the balance sheets of companies in an attempt to “decipher what the auditors are really trying to tell you (or not tell you), as opposed to what the management would like to tell you, and decide whether it’s the Apple of the future or a pile of pants.” His big insight is “realising that the quest for value extends far beyond financial markets into a whole way of thinking about how to live your life.”

Including how to buy your wine, as the tips given by pundits, often tipsy on their free samples, are really a pile of pants. Our weekly RECM best value tastings, which kick off again next week with Sauvignon Blanc, are an example of extending a quest for value into shopping for wine.

At the end of the month we’ll be launching our all-singing, all-dancing RECM Best Value website where the fruits of our labours may be plucked and delivered to your condo by getwine, the most dynamic and successful wine e-tailer in the business. Who knows, perhaps a wine from Spier will feature in our monthly selection.