Judging Rose Rocks kicks off at Auslese in a couple of hours, which is quite appropriate as I write about Iggy Pop and Rudeberg in the Times this morning.

Over at the Pendock Wine Gallery @ Taj, Winnie Bowman will be chairing a blind tasting of 48 red blends as part of our weekly RECM Best Value gig. We had so many entries (which attract no entrance fee) part II of the tasting will replay next Wednesday. For those interested in the strong suit of SA wine, a public tasting of the famous 48 will be on offer at the Gallery this afternoon from 5pm. If Iggy is in town…

Value tastings are all the rage. Copy cat Robin von Holdt has an Ultra Value competition that charges producers hundreds of rands per entry – which is quite ironic as no wines costing more than R100 a bottle can enter – while there is a consumer competition called The Gold Wine Awards which has an R80 per bottle ceiling. It costs R490 plus VAT to enter a bottle into the Gold Awards.

Rip-off Robin and the Greedy Golds all miss the point – of course you can have good value over R100 or R80. This dim duo of competitions doesn’t know how to find quality when prices are more than two digits long. Time to sign up for a Masters in Wine at UCT Business School with the lizard.

But the question remains, why do producers pay good money to enter these flawed tournaments? The value is definitely from the point of view of the show organizers, rather than producers or consumers.