So I’ve had my say and judged the entries for the Veritas Young Winewriter 2015 Competition. Without giving anything away, a case of observations:

1) Thank heavens the judge who plagiarized one of the entries in the first running of the competition remains dropped from the panel. Shame on him!

2) The fair sex outnumbered the gents by a margin of 3:1, which is curious as testosterone dominates national dead tree media columns. Now that the M&G seems to have finally dropped Toxic Tim, I hear his place may be taken by Mr. Min. Which rhymes and maintains the dominance of Y chromosomes.

3) The top three entrants are way better than any of the big names writing today.

4) The number of times a particular UK guru is quoted is scary, although this may be a double bluff as contestants attempt to second guess the judges. Tiny Tim doesn’t do it for me – I saw through him years ago.

5) The Swartland boxes way above its weight in the entries.

6) The language of Shakespeare does a ditto. Which is a crying shame as the language of Leipoldt dominates among producers.