What a week the past one was for Old Mutual. Hot on the heels of the news that CEO Bruce Hemphill is paying himself £9m – or ten times his base salary of £900,000 – as an incentive to do his job, comes the news that the top Chenin Blanc at the Old Mutual Toasty Wine Show was the Secret Cellar # 235 2015 which was on sale earlier this year for R34.99 with a Platter rating of NA. Which must mean “not awful.” Or perhaps “nice artwork” as ratings are dished up after the label has been thoroughly checked out by a Soccer Mom.

So Bruce’s bonus can buy him over 5.5 million bottles of Chenin Blanc. What a joke. Don’t you just want to hose yourself? How can Bruce reconcile funding the Toasty with his own modest bonus. Is value for money to be the new corporate motto at Mutual? Mutual owner Nerdbank must be fuming as are policy owners after less than sparkling returns of late.

PS Mark Norrish, the razor tongued UltraLiquors guru behind Secret Cellar reports that Platter has now rated the wine 3.5 stars in the Autumn edition of the Ultra catalogue. My NA came from a Google search of the interwebs.