The wine world’s lavish offering of scores, ratings, judgements and trophies has led to two distinctly different sets of wine criticism: the traditional and trusted assessment of wines in a blind-tasted, unsighted environment, and the scores from celebrity wine media components who assess their subject with full knowledge of the bottle’s contents in terms of producer, appellation and personalities behind the brand.

This has resulted in a discernible rift in wine assessment. When it comes to guides, tomes and missives promoting wines that are tasted sighted, one will find a plethora of producers whose names will hardly ever feature as having entered competitions and platforms where the blind, unsighted judging model is employed. Much of the reason being that many producers do not have the confidence to subject their wines to objective scrutiny, being assured that their reputation and backstories will assist in swaying the judge who commits to sighted assessment in reaching a more holistically assumed score.

On the other front, one has the competitions where wines are judged purely on what is offered in the glass. Not a label, reputation or warm smile from the producer in sight. Fair to say that entries to these objective, unknown judging events are less representative of the wine industry than are the reports and special features where the identity of the assessed wines are known by the assessor.

Blind-tasted, or sighted?

For me, there is only one answer: to honour both the wine and the craft of criticism, wines must be judged unsighted. Only by tasting blind can we approach the elusive goal of objectivity, freeing our palates from preconceptions and our pens from bias.

The tyranny of the label

The wine world is awash with information before the first sip is even taken. A label, a region, a vintage, a producer’s name… how can they but not conjure expectations? A famous château or an acclaimed winemaker primes us for greatness before the cork is pulled. Conversely, an obscure appellation, a young, unfamiliar producer or large-scale corporate, volume-orientated winery might quietly lower our expectations, even before the first swirl.

Psychologists call this the “halo effect”, i.e. the tendency to let prior knowledge influence sensory judgment. The same principle applies whether one is tasting a Grand Cru from Burgundy or a newcomer’s Paarl Syrah. To pretend we are immune to these cues is naïve. Even the most experienced tasters are human, and humans are suggestible creatures.

I have seen it countless times: the hush that descends when a wine of grand provenance is poured; the polite murmur when a lesser label is unveiled. Suddenly, the same aromas seem more complex, the same texture more refined, when attached to a name of prestige. This is not deception: it is psychology. But it is precisely why blind tasting matters.

Blind tasting as a leveller

Tasting unsighted does more than remove bias; it restores democracy to the glass. It gives all winemakers a fair hearing, and established names and seemingly untouchable reputations a fair challenge. In a blind lineup, a wine must justify its standing not by the narrative it carries, but by the liquid in the glass.

It is often said that blind tasting strips wine of its story, that it reduces something romantic and cultural to a sterile exercise. I would argue the opposite. When one tastes blind, one truly listens to the wine. Free of distractions, one hears its voice more clearly. The fruit, the structure, the balance. These are what speak: not the marketing copy, the cool, endearing personality of the winemaker and his or her hospitality, nor the price tag.

And how revealing such exercises can be. History is littered with examples of blind tastings overturning assumptions. The 1976 Judgment of Paris remains the most famous: Californian wines, unknown to the European elite, triumphed over Bordeaux and Burgundy when tasted blind. Such moments are not mere curiosities; they are reminders that excellence can come from anywhere, and that even experts can be swayed by reputation.

The illusion of “context”

Those who argue for sighted tastings – like Tim Atkin, Neal Martin and Team Platter’s – often appeal to the notion of context, that understanding a wine’s identity allows for deeper appreciation. There is merit in this sentiment, but it confuses understanding with evaluation.

Context enriches our appreciation of wine as culture, yes. It tells us why a grower farms this slope, why this soil imparts that mineral tang. But when assigning scores, medals, or ratings that influence markets and livelihoods, we step into the realm of judgment. And true judgment – the kind that matters to the consumer – demands impartiality.

To score a wine sighted is to invite bias. Even subtle associations such as price, rarity and vintage can nudge a score up or down. Blind tasting removes that temptation. It insists that a wine’s worth be measured by what is in the glass today, not by its history or ambition or the cosy, personable relationships the producer has kindled with the judge.

The human factor

Of course, blind tasting is not perfect. It can, if mishandled, encourage a certain clinical detachment or overemphasis on surface features such as aromatics, extraction and power at the expense of charm and longevity. But this is a fault of calibration, not of concept. The solution is not to abandon blind tasting, but to refine it.

Truly skilled tasters can reconcile the rigour of blind tasting with sensitivity and experience. A great critic can assess a wine unsighted, then, once its identity is revealed, contextualise their impressions within the broader narrative of terroir and tradition. In this way, we achieve both fairness and understanding.

Integrity in the modern wine world

In today’s hyper-connected, influencer-driven era, where reputations rise and fall with the click of a post, the need for blind evaluation has never been greater. Consumers rely on critics not merely for description, but for trust. If our judgments are to carry credibility, they must be visibly independent of hype, personality and heritage alike.

Blind tasting safeguards that credibility. It assures the reader that when a critic praises a bottle, it is not because of its label or legacy, but because the wine itself deserves it. For producers and consumers alike, it offers reassurance that their wines will be judged on merit alone. And this calls for strictness and discipline. To halt the slide from true merit to mediocrity, something that wine ratings and scores are becoming due to the plethora of guides and scoring narratives where stories are judged to be as important as the quality in the glass.

In an age when transparency is the new currency of trust, blind tasting is our most transparent act.

The wine deserves it

At its heart, blind tasting is an act of respect for the wine, the winemaker, and the consumer. It acknowledges that each wine deserves to be heard before it is judged, that greatness can emerge from unexpected corners, and that humility is the critic’s first virtue.

Wine is, after all, about discovery. And what greater joy than discovering beauty where we least expect it? When the label is hidden, surprise becomes possible again.

To taste blind is not to strip wine of meaning. It is to see it more clearly.

Durbanville wine estate Diemersdal staked a place as one of the most successful producers in the history of the annual Absa Top 10 Pinotage Trophy awards by this year raking in its 12^th Top 10 trophy since entering this competition for the first time in 2010. Diemersdal’s The Journal Pinotage 2022 was selected as one of the Top 10 winners in the prestigious annual competition.

This places Diemersdal among the top producers in the history of the Absa Top 10 competition and arguably the most successful winery ever from the Durbanville wine region in terms of local accolades.

“The Absa Top 10 Pinotage Trophy is one of the most sought-after red wine trophies for any South African winemaker, and winning it for the 12^th time is a true privilege and honour – especially in a year commemorating the 100^th year of Pinotage’s existence,” says Thys Louw, owner-winemaker at Diemersdal.

“Winning it has always been a highlight each time we have been fortunate enough to do so. But becoming one of the handful of producers to get to show 12 Absa Pinotage trophies on the mantelpiece is something truly special.”

Diemersdal The Journal Pinotage 2022 was made from 48-year old vines, farmed dryland as are all vineyards on the farm. Fermentation ensued over four days in wooden open-top fermenters, with punch-downs and pump-overs undertaken every three hours. The wine then spent 22 months maturing in new 225l French oak barrels.

Louw says an Absa Top 10 is an award you don’t take for granted. “The number of quality Pinotage producers is increasing at a rate of knots as more winemakers discover the magical qualities of the grape and its ability to express the sites of our country’s best wine regions.”

Juandré Bruwer, Diemersdal winemaker, says the quality of Diemersdal Pinotage and its distinctive character can be attributed to the farm’s cool-climate terroir, as well as the Louw family’s legacy of farming and making Pinotage.

“Dryland farming on clay and shale soils and the maritime influence of Durbanville terroir all add to the structure of the wine which is characterised by a formidable backbone complemented with bright fruit expression,” says Bruwer. “We aim for sturdiness in the wine, but elegance and refinement are non-negotiable.”

“The cellar and vineyard teams have embraced Pinotage as one of Diemersdal’s key red varieties, and it is their understanding of the grape – from the vine to the bottling of the final wine – that enables us to make a Pinotage showing true quality,” says Bruwer. “And more importantly, this 12th Absa Top 10 Trophy has shown the quality to be consistent.”

As I placed the glass of Paul Clüver Chardonnay to these parched lips, my senses had already begun to stir in anticipation of the godly nectar that was about to enter my mouth. My sensorial receptors and I were not disappointed as I took a deep draught and sighed with pleasure in an aroused manner bordering on the indecent.

Being involved in the business of wine writing and marketing, was I supposed to experience such a degree of immense, inner-thigh twitching, eye-tearing pleasure and delicious joy? Or does my profession of wine communication require me to react to this Paul Clüver Estate Chardonnay with the conventional responses we in the trade are supposed to show when tasting a wine?

Sure, I could describe it as showing “bright curls of citrus-peel”. Or a “shard of Atlantic minerality”. “White flowers” were also present, and so too “honey-suckle” and a “layer of grilled nuts”.

Like the bulk of wine-tasting jargon used in formal reviews and tasting notes, the norm requires neat slivers of phrases and confident, knowledgeable words being hauled out to which a diversity of flavours and aromas are attached to the wine being tasted.

“Assertive presence on the mid-palate, accentuated by zesty white fruit and a crystalline precision leading to a keen, brisk finish.”

I know, I pull terminology like this every day for professional wine business purposes, be it a press-release, trade tasting-note or social media boost. This is how we roll.

But with the future of wine being so heatedly questioned and alarmist doomsdayers questioning how younger, more modern generations are going to be swayed into partaking of our beloved elixir that is wine, I ask myself what role these descriptors have to play in making wine appealing.

Because as colourful, romantic, informed-sounding and impressive they may be, do the current sentences, phrases and words flowing from the pens of wine-tasters and critics make wine sound like the one thing the drinker truly cares about, and that is its being tasty and delicious. “Lekker”, in Afrikaans.

“Hints of green-fig accompanied by a brush of dry fynbos and a dollop of loquat pulp” might colour-in the impression of what is in one’s wine glass, but it does little to infectiously recommend the content as one of abundant flavours and joy-delivering taste that one eagerly wants to experience more of.

And this is where the disconnect in much of wine communication lies. Conventional wine descriptors, inherited by most of today’s wine marketers and writers from the troves of traditional missives of generations past, are to my mind far removed from the modern wine consumer.

The new world of wine appreciation requires the sharing of experience, emotion and the bliss of wine’s deliciousness. “Smart pH balance and notes of pine-needle” in a Cabernet Sauvignon competently play in the arena of convention and formal expectation. But to someone just looking for a glass of something tastily satisfying, this kind of wording in providing a personal appraisal is as uninviting as it is irrelevant.

Thus, we wine writers and communicators, too, must adapt and form engagement with the consumer in was that are more appropriate, appealing. “Lengthy minerality, precision and the harmony between austerity and generosity” makes, modestly said, a competent tasting note or review. But it is not going to get the palate of a potential wine drinker watering in anticipation, being about as inviting to the sharing of taste and deliciousness as a burrata and prosciutto sandwich presented in a sterile white polystyrene bento-box.

We must be forthcoming and emotional in our opinions. More colourful and uninhibited in describing taste, flavour, deliciousness and sensorial pleasure. Not shy to express feeling and the decadent desire to pine for more of the wine your glass, and encouraging others to partake in the experience the wine has evoked in you.

To rephrase the old Mafia adage: It’s not business, it’s personal.

By Lafras Huguenet

Ah, the tortured scribblings of the modern wine writer. One can scarcely open a broadsheet, click a link, or stumble into a symposium without being greeted by another lachrymose jeremiad on the “existential crisis of wine”. (My editor of this site included, bless him.)

Good heavens. These are the same people who can’t order a flat white without weighing its socio-political implications, and now they are foisting their neuroses onto the poor, unsuspecting grape.

According to this doom-mongering sect, the fermented juice of Vitis vinifera is perched upon the precipice of irrelevance, about to tumble headlong into the oubliette of forgotten cultural artefacts, somewhere between the penny-farthing and the spinet. Why? Because, they say with sepulchral solemnity, a few quarterly reports show a dip in sales. Cue hand-wringing. Cue navel-gazing. Cue Aristotelian essays on whether wine has meaning in a TikTok world.

What balderdash. What arrant, over-fermented poppycock.

Wine does not have an “existential crisis.” Wine has an existence. Eight thousand years of the stuff. Longer than Christianity, longer than Islam, longer than parliamentary democracy and, mercifully, longer than the modern wine columnist. Empires have risen, fallen, and been written about in worse Latin than this, yet throughout it all – through Visigoths, Mongols, and even Prohibition – the human urge to crush a grape and wait for the magic has remained undimmed.

And so when I read these airy philosophical tracts, dripping with self-importance and purple prose, I can’t help but think the problem is not with the wine at all. The problem is with the writers, staring at their glass as though it were the Delphic Oracle, and upon seeing nothing deciding to conjure doom instead. If wine were a person, it would roll its eyes and get back to the serious business of being delicious with roast lamb.

Yes, there is a temporary dip in consumption. Shocking news, that: consumption patterns change, circulate, evolve and reinvent. But wine does not require the ministrations of amateur Kierkegaards speculating on its demise. Wine is not a neurotic, therapy-seeking middle-manager. Wine is a cultural constant, part of human conviviality and civilisation, as essential to our story as bread, cheese, and quarrelling with the neighbours.

So let us leave aside this pretentious hand-flapping about relevance, this sepulchral chorus of “Is wine still important?” and instead pour another glass. The relevance of wine is proven every time cork meets corkscrew, every time a bottle is opened and, mirabile dictu, someone smiles.

To those columnists who would fashion an existential tragedy out of a blip in sales charts: kindly stop projecting your own mid-life crisis onto the bottle. Wine has survived worse. And unlike you, dear scribe, it will still be here in another 8 000 years.

The stunned looks shown by attendees during last week’s Cape Wine extravaganza had not so much to do with the regal quality of the South African wines on show as with the horrors of the culinary offerings dished up at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) where the three-day event was held. The hundreds of international guests present at this event in a city frequently alluded to as one of the world’s foremost foodie destinations must have, at lunch time, tried to catch a glimpse of Table Mountain to see whether they had not been misplaced, instead ending up in a rural Pakistani boarding school where the Urdu catering-staff were being assisted by tea-ladies from Yorkshire.

As an attendee, I first experienced the vicious onslaught from the CTICC caterers at the Coffee on the Square café situated at the lobby that exits to the Westin Hotel. The show had been busy during the morning, and I managed to zip out of the expansive, throbbing hall in hope of a restorative bite, finding myself seated at the Coffee on the Square’s al fresco patio. On the menu were sandwiches and burgers, but wishing to bypass the gluten for now, I opted for the dish of nachos and a Coke Zero. Typical simple convention fare and undemanding in its execution, one would have assumed.

The Coke was good and cold. As for the nacho dish, well, this looked like it had been prepared by a colour-blind Mexican who was consuming more of his drug-lord’s wares than he was selling.

In the middle of the plate, a bowl, but to this one will get later. Scattered around the bowl was a layer of corn nacho-chips covered by a pus-yellow layer of gooey melted matter that, I supposed, was cheese. Scattered atop this expanse were clunks of cold, stiff sour-cream which was probably meant for spreading across the nacho-cheesy minefield. And would indeed have been possible had a blow-torch been on hand.

A further attempt to provide dimension to the dish came in the form of the traditional partner to any nacho-plate, namely guacamole. This staple of Mexican cuisine involves the mashing of fresh avocado pears with lime-juice, chilli, garlic and cilantro into a fresh, green mass. Hardly Cordon Bleu stuff.

This particular café, however, was a sucker for tradition not. Instead, the guacamole offered was purchased from some store, being squeezed from a tube onto the nachos in dense, pasty threads of a pale, insipid green the colour and form of Leprechaun turds.

Now for the bowl in the middle of this all. If this bowl had been filled with red, spicy salsa one could have poured the salsa over the offensively dull mine-field of nacho chips, cheese and Leprechaun excrement. This was not to be, as the bowl held a chunky green salad, serving no purpose.

I scarfed-down a few chips, taking care so as not to be attacked and throttled by the acrid cords of melted cheese and avoiding by all means any splattering of green fake guacamole landing on my new shirt. Needless to say, the dish’s flavour was as bland and innocuous as its visual appeal.

A night of vinous frivolity and some deep sleep does tend to erase even the most vividly bad memories, thus the very next morning I again found myself at the same Coffee on the Square for breakfast. Now, I don’t often breakfast outside of two espressos and a short cigar, but sometimes the empty feeling brought on by a slight hangover leads to a primal urge for a good morning feed. Especially with a full-day of work in the CTICC’s Cape Wine hall lying ahead.

Seated inside the café this time, I downed two espressos before perusing the menu and deciding upon the Sausage Breakfast, which would hopefully provide the correct level of sustenance and artery-clogging inner comfort to get me through the day. One would have added bacon to the breakfast, but for possible Halaal reasons, pork is not available.

The plate arrived and my mood lifted at the sight of two fried eggs, over-easy and a cheerfully scarlet sliver of fried tomato. Curiosity was evoked by the Sausage Breakfast’s two, well, sausages. Put it this way, if they say Sausage here, they mean it. The linear, stiff beams of sausage were of a substantial enough length to warrant opening their own OnlyFans page, with a direct link to PornHub.

Worrying was that the main feature of this well-endowed breakfast plate were uniform in length and mechanically cylindrical, obviously having been churned out en masse to industrial volumes. This assumption was confirmed upon cutting a morsel from the sausage, the knife easily breaking through the casing and falling through the interior.

This was not meat, but slurry blasted from an animal carcass and then spun and blended into a slimy mass before a thickening agent had allowed the goo to set into sausage format. The artificial flavourants were overpowering, and after a few bites simply became intolerable – I feared that consuming both sausages would result in me having to endure the rest of the day’s event covered in an unsettling, disturbing MSG-induced orange glow and being mistaken for a Nepalese wine-merchant.

For the rest of the show, I avoided the CTICC’s food on offer, although I did look around enough to see that this was lacking in the purported “international” standard. Boarding-school pails of curries and shredded meat lying in glistening pools of fatty sauce. Cardboard-inspired pizza slices. Cold, stiff wraps with gooey interiors.

A ghastly offering, requiring a conference seeking improvement and one where I’ll try hard as hell to track-down that Leprechaun. And really make him kak.

Your soul is already in heaven, and soon your body is to be embraced by this earth, and this is good because it is the soil you always loved, and I believe that just like we did, earth and soil love you. In life and in death, you are a true son of the soil.

You spoke often of the land and the earth. The cool red sand of the Sandveld out on the West Coast where potatoes and herenbone grow. Those salt-pans at Lambert’s Bay, where as a barefoot boy you began playing rugby, the crusty surface’s harsh, blinding white light as you ran with the ball; the sharp pain as the pan’s brittle dry cover grazed your knees in the tackle, and the sting of the salt as it soaked into your bloodied flesh.

Later, from 1968, the soils were on the hills of Kanonkop where you prepared the decomposed granite for planting Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinotage vines, digging and scraping through the surface, and manually working 50 tons of limestone into each hectare of earth.

Soil. Wet soil. The ankle-deep mud of a wet Newlands rugby pitch where you played for Province and for country; the gritty chalk pebbles of the Clos des Mouches vineyard in Burgundy glistening after a bout of spring rain, and that cool, damp clay koppie on your beloved Vriesenhof farm on Stellenboschberg.

“All the great wines of the world are dependent on the clay content of their vineyards’ soils,” you liked to say.

You were a farmer first. “Thing about Jan, is he’s crazy about soil,” said your friend Kevin Arnold to me a few years’ back. “After harvest, the whole of Stellenbosch is heading out to Hermanus or measuring samples in the cellar – but not Jan. He’s waist deep in some hole in a Vriesenhof vineyard checking the condition of his soils ahead of autumn.”

Having spent much time in France, particularly in your beloved Burgundy, you knew great winemakers have first to be good farmers.

“There they don’t even have a name for a winemaker,” you said, “it is a vigneron. Carer of the vineyard and the land. That’s our only true role.”

It was in France, you told me, that you truly found amazement at nature’s effect on plants. This was not in a vineyard in Burgundy or Bordeaux. But in Normandy, in Giverny where Claude Monet’s garden of light and colour and of inspiration lies. Inspiration you found there, too, upon visiting Monet’s garden during a rugby tour in the 1960s.

“I was amazed at the shrubs and flowers and trees, and the pond with its lilies, as I have always loved gardens and this one looked like it had been laid-out and nurtured by an angel,” you told me. “But what was truly fascinating, was that the flowers, the same flowers, showed different colours depending on where they were planted in the garden. And I remember thinking, that if nature can so dramatically influence the colours of these same flowers, what incredible effect must nature not have on the vineyard, the grapes and the wines we wish to make.”

That moment in Giverny was a moment forever stuck in your mind – which held millions of moments, as your memory was so very fine and clear – and also convinced you that wine farmers must strive for beauty in wine. And that it is nature which liest at the heart of beauty, in wine and very many other things in life, too. Especially the things that matter.

“There are no great wines,” you liked to say, “only great bottles.”

Wisdom is not sought or acquired, it befalls those blessed enough to deserve it. And we were honoured, privileged to have experienced your wisdom. You led, without commanding. Quietly inspiring others to seek the earth’s mysterious ways with vine and wine, and to – above all – remain in awe and wonder on this path the people of wine have chosen. Cherish it.

Last week during the Cape Wine event, on the very day you had passed, Gary Jordan told a gathering that every South African wine person in that huge, cavernous hall in Cape Town had been in some way influenced by Jan Boland Coetzee. This is true.

You led the real vinous revolution in South Africa when in the 1970s estate wines began being made, our country’s wines at last bearing a fingerprint of their geography, their expression of place. Those first Kanonkops you made – Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinotage from the 1973 vintage – bore the hallmarks of greatness, paving the way for the legend you were to become.

In 1980 you headed south of Stellenbosch, to Vriesenhof to make wine from Cabernet Sauvignon, a grape you always said was the region’s heart-beat. But then you spent a year in Burgundy in service of Maison Joseph Drouhin. Talking of those days, you laughed, saying the first thing you learnt there was how regularly your fellow French vignerons had to take a break to eat. You worked 600 tons of Burgundy grapes during the 1981 harvest, toured the vineyards of Chambertin, Musigny, Montrachet and Corton. Felt the soils there, and smelt them.

Like you always did of South African earth, you understood the earth of Burgundy and could feel its heartbeat in its wines you so loved. You spoke about them with awe.

Back in the Cape, you planted Chardonnay and then Pinot Noir, and the wines were clear and fine, and spoke the language of Stellenboschberg with a Burgundian lisp.

When you yourself spoke, people listened. For respecting you and your wisdom came naturally to us. We would hear about the great Cape vintages of years past. The reasons for the wines of Musigny today being lighter in structure than they were 40 years back. Why the sun’s differing radiation made Cabernet Sauvignon from Simonsberg lie quicker and drier on the tongue than the ones made on the south-facing slopes of Stellenboschberg.

Your voice was like the way honey goes when the sugar in it crystalises giving the sweetness a textured gritty edge. Everyone loved to listen to what you had to say, and everyone who did, remembers your words as much as they do the man behind them.

Your favourite wine-writer was a German: Terry Theise. You liked eggs over easy and laid that morning by the Vriesenhof hens. Before meals you would pray at the table, taking your guests’ hands, and I remember the firm pressing you’d give my hand as the saying of grace ended.

You loved the sea as much as the soil, and one day you alone caught over 300 snoek from a boat using a land-line. I watched you dive for crayfish in the icy waters off Lambert’s Bay wearing only a heavy cotton rugby-jersey for protection against the cold.

The mysteries of life and of wine fascinated you. Your last project, before your mind closed in and the light dimmed, was to find out whether the origins of Pinot Gris in New Zealand stemmed from Napoleon Bonaparte’s incarceration on St Helena.

You told me there were records of Napoleon having Pinot Noir vine-cuttings shipped to St Helena from Burgundy. As Pinot Gris was grown in Burgundy at that time, these ended up in Napoleon’s stash, and after some British ship heading for New Zealand had picked-up the vines, they were planted in the Land of the Long White Cloud.

You would have died wondering about this, and about the very many other facets of wine and the world; about people and life and history that always fascinated you, kept your thoughts alive on those dark starry spring nights when the cool southerly breeze kicked up, blowing briskly over Stellenboschberg. You loved that world, as well as many other parts of this earth, and now you have been returned to it where, and of this I am sure, you are just as welcome and beloved as you were in the days of walking upon it.

Probably not knowing that now, in your absence, those footsteps and the prints they left, are eternal.

The Russians, especially, had immense respect for the restorative powers of Champagne. In former times, even the most knowledgeable medical practitioners believed that a glass of Champagne had sufficient restorative powers to kick-start a weakened patient back to vigour and to life.

Arguably the most famous account hereof, is when the genius Russian author Anton Chekov was lying on his death-bed and the doctor called for a glass of Champagne.

The writer sipped from the cup, stating: “I am dying. I haven’t drunk Champagne for a long time.” Unfortunately, the elixir’s effects were insufficient, and Chekov died shortly after the sparkling draught. This was in 1904, and American short-story writer Raymond Carver wrote a magnificent account of his idol’s passing in the story “Errand”. Strongly advised reading.

This bit of touching nostalgia was set adrift with last week’s announcing of the winners in this year’s Amorim Cap Classique Challenge, a convivial gathering at Vrymansfontein where the atmosphere was more about life and celebration than the unveiling of wine competition results, which can be a stern and serious affair for those attending, uncertain whether their entries would have found glistening muster from the judges.

As the MC at the event, I was going to use the life-affirming powers the Russians saw in Champagne to lead a statement of sparkling wine’s ability to get the heart beating of a wine industry that has currently fallen on hard times. Local sales decreasing 10% a year, take note.

However, in the week leading up to this event, the South African wine industry lost a splendid person in the form of Anthony van Schalkwyk. Not only a wine ambassador, businessman and marketer of the genteel, personable and courteous kind, Anthony was married to Caroline. She manages the Cap Classique Producers Association, and before tragedy struck on that Monday afternoon, Caroline was still talking about the event as her favourite day in the year.

The MC’s address, obviously, had to be altered out of respect for Anthony. During the event, not only the glasses were wet, but the eyes, too.

But what I was going to say, was that like Champagne restored the ailing health of the Russians, Cap Classique – the Cape’s home-grown version of the timeless starry sparkled drink – could just be the jolt the sputtering South African wine industry needs.

During his address at Friday’s event, Joaquim Sá, MD of Amorim Cork South Africa said of Cap Classique, quoting Rico Basson of SA Wine: “Another South African wine success story! Few categories capture the spirit of our winelands quite like Cap Classique. Whilst modest in volume compared to the rest of South Africa’s wine sales, it has shown strong annual growth – 16% in 2024. More than 70% of the 7.5 million bottles now sell for over R200 per bottle.”

Joaquim added to this, stating the category grew by 6.3%, meaning 3.1 million bottles of Cap Classique found their way into glasses around the world.

“Now consider this: the global market for bottle-fermented wines already exceeds 800 million bottles, many of them sold above R200,” said Joaquim. “With around 10 million bottles, South Africa still represents only 1.2% of this beautiful market. Clearly, there is enormous growth potential, because Cap Classique often is seen by critics and experts as matching – or even exceeding – Champagne at similar price points, especially in terms of balance, length, and freshness.

“The road to success is to continue premiumising and leveraging South African identity; to further specialise and innovate; expand exports; capture the huge opportunity in the domestic market by positioning Cap Classique for everyday enjoyment; engage with younger consumers; and last not least, embrace the booming link with tourism.”

The growth of Cap Classique makes sense in today’s market where consumer profile reflects an ever-changing taste. Towards drinks that are cold and sparkling. Fruit-forward and diverse in flavour – something our Cap Classique categories of Brut, Blanc de Blancs, rosé and semi-sweet Nectar-styles offer in abundance.

Also, many Cap Classiques bear the labels of big, visible and active brands: Graham Beck, Krone, Nederburg, Kleine Zalze and Cabrière. And it is a fact that the image, profile and desirability of brands are as important as the contents of the bottle: Tom Ford and Levi’s are not-driven by a boutique, cottage-industry profile.

The fortunes of Cap Classique are increasing, to the greater good of the South African wine industry. True greatness is but a heart-beat away.

It is green country, the green of long grass, wild brush and, in season, the verdant foliage of old oak trees and expansive vineyards upon which all kinds of grapes ripen to make the wines of Bairrada in Portugal. There are pigs here too, and when the pigs have given birth to the little pigs, energetic farmers ferry the piglets to the nearby village of Mealhada, where – once killed – the small pigs are lovingly roasted to a golden crisp and served with a sauce made from wine and garlic, and white pepper. It is very good.

This is the region where the Palacio Buçaco is found, a former palace and a lavish design of rural gothic that now serves as a hotel. And since 1917, wine has been made at the palace, only two wines, of which one is red and one is white.

I have visited this piece of Portuguese country, and it is indeed fine. North-east of Lisbon, it nears the mountains of the east but is still influenced by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, making this place of Bairrada cold and wet, and because it is very wet, it is very green. Especially when the sky is blue and sunny, then it looks greener still, and the pigs appear very white as they nurse their little piglets among the green grass waiting for the pig-farmers to arrive to take the small critters to the house of animal killing.

It is a place that is imprinted on memory, and once all the fine things of Portugal are imprinted on memory, there is not much room for anything else, because it is as good and as fine a part of the world as any. Especially, when it is green and the sky is blue, and you walk up the gravel path and your feet crunch on the small stones as you present yourself to the Palacio Buçaco to drink the wine.

Of all the wine of Buçaco and of Portugal, and of most of the world, it is the white wine from Buçaco that I love so very much, and will continue to do so. As it is imprinted on memory, ensuring that I can never forget it. Which I do not do, as when nights are long and I hear the mountain springs of Bairrada and see the green, all that green, I taste the white wine of Buçaco, for which I long.

The wine is made at the Palacio, and from three grape varieties originating from two regions, both which – incidentally – are green.

Bical and Maria Gomes grapes grow on the vines in the Bairrada region, with its deep mushy clay soils and hard chunks of rock. These two grapes are used to compose the Buçaco white, along with another grape called Encruzado. This variety, which reflects the layered fruit complexity of Chardonnay, grows well in the region of Dão, which neighbours Bairrada, yet is country of a lesser green and fewer pigs, but with good stony, rocky soils, fine for viticulture.

And it is this Encruzado from Dão that is taken to the Palace, where it is blended with Maria Gomes and Bical to make the Buçaco white wine. The juice is fermented and then it flows to new barrels of French oak, where it ages beneath the palace in a space that is dark and cool, until the wine is ready for bottling.

The bottle, clear glass, has worn the same label since 1920, each vintage simply specified with a coin-shaped white sticker.

Since my first engagement with this wine, I can state that it is a superb white wine, one to be appreciated with a feeling of being blessed to have the opportunity to taste and drink it. It is a blessing I felt recently when accessing the Buçaco from the 2017 vintage, an eight-year-old wine of magnificence and stature, beautiful and pristine in its current form, but a wine that will age to greater heights over the next two decades.

The beauty lies in the wine’s completeness, its delivering of everything a lover of white wine can wish for. Like a Chet Baker trumpet-solo, a Sydney Sweeny advertisement or a Michelangelo carving from Carrara marble, everything is in synch, in place and tuning-fork precise.

Smell it, and there is green and wet rock and heavy ocean fog slowly reaching landfall. It is crisp, and salty and smells like the crack of dawn on a fine autumn day.

Heavenly as the aroma is, the taste does not disappoint. A tang of clean steel and sharp lemon – characters of the Bica grape – ensures the wine enters the palate with an honest vigour, sustaining the other features throughout the experience of drinking. Maria Gomes brings a confident presence with dollops of loquat, persimmon peel and a sliver of salted guava.

And then, on the mouth, the Encruzado arrives bringing sun and warmth, precocious with nuts and Key Lime and, interesting this, a perfumed taint of ultra virgin olive oil.

All these tastes are cloaked in a regal, monumental presence making for an accurate, sublime expression of white wine bearing memories of time and place, of a broad green country and its sound of rocks and gravel, all older than us, which – like the memory of Buçaco – will be things of foreverness.  

Cider may be made from apples, but not all ciders are created equal. Traditional cider in countries such as England, France, Australia, and even parts of South Africa is made by fermenting pure apple juice, usually bottled with natural sparkle. Just as wine must come from grapes, cider has always been seen as an apple-driven drink.

Unlike wine, however, cider is not tightly regulated. In many countries, ciders are produced with only a fraction of real apple juice, diluted with other fruit juices or sugar syrups.

South Africa has quietly become one of the world’s largest cider producers over the past three decades, largely thanks to the success of Savanna and Hunters, both owned by Heineken Beverages. Savanna, launched in 1996, is today the world’s biggest cider brand. Heineken now produces around three million hectolitres of cider annually.

Local law requires South African cider to contain at least 80% apple juice. This rule means a significant volume of apples – about 280 000 tons per year, or 30% of the national crop – is pressed into juice and concentrate, much of it for Heineken. Most comes from the Elgin and Ceres regions, although the company also imports concentrate from China.

But this supply chain may be under pressure. Heineken is preparing to approach the Department of Agriculture with a proposal to reduce the minimum apple content in South African cider from 80% to 60%.

Such a move would have two major consequences: it would cut a vital market for apple growers, and it could damage cider’s image as a genuinely apple-based drink.

That image is central to Heineken’s marketing. Savanna is sold as being “made from crushed apples from the fertile Elgin Valley” and “rooted deep in the orchards.” Lowering the apple content risks undermining that story – and hurting farmers in the process.

Anton Rabe, head of fruit industry body Hortgro, says the proposal makes little sense.
“We really don’t understand Heineken’s reasoning,” he says. “From the perspective of the apple industry, it’s a no-brainer – reducing apple content will harm the integrity of cider as well as the livelihoods of growers. We will oppose any attempt to lower the percentage. In fact, there’s a strong case to increase it – in Australia and New Zealand, cider is 100% apple.”

Rabe believes the real motive is cost-cutting by replacing fruit with cheaper sugar syrups such as maize syrup, and by reducing reliance on imported concentrate. Hortgro plans to model and quantify the potential impact before responding formally. “The last thing we need is instability, job losses, and reduced investor confidence,” he warns.

South African apple concentrate exports to the US are already under pressure, with the Trump administration having imposed a 30% tariff. “If cider content is diluted at the same time, it would be a double blow for the apple industry,” Rabe says.

Heineken, however, says it is simply reviewing regulatory proposals. Johan van Zyl, supply chain director at Heineken Beverages, says: “This process is about understanding the implications and contributing meaningfully to public consultations. Updating technical standards and legislation is part of normal regulatory development, and we welcome the chance to participate.”

Van Zyl adds that Heineken is exploring ways to align with industry developments to allow more flexibility for growth and innovation in the cider sector. The company remains committed to sourcing apples locally wherever possible: “For the South African market alone, we produce more than three million hectolitres of cider. The success of our brands is built on locally sourced apples, making us proud contributors to the country’s agricultural economy and a true local success story.”

For now, the debate remains unresolved. On one side, farmers and industry bodies warn against weakening cider’s apple core; on the other, Heineken argues for regulatory flexibility. Ultimately, consumers may have the final say – and those who love their cider will hope the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

(Translated from Afrikaans, as published in Die Burger newspaper.)

The world of wine writing and wine-speak is filled with much gobbly-gook, much of which would make a Cyril Ramaphosa address to the Disenfranchised Nguni Farmers Veterans Association sound positively scintillating. But I’d rate the vapid, meaningless nature of the feedback sessions from judges who have just judged a specific wine competition as right at the top, slightly behind the copiously worded essays on suggested food and wine pairings.

The occurrence is thus: there is a wine competition where wines are assessed by a panel of experts. Scores are given, debating is done. And somewhere on the horizon lies an awards function or ceremony where the winning wines and their makers are handed trophies, gongs and pats on the back. Which is all good and well.

However, between said judging of the wines and the announcing of the results, PRs and the organisers of these celebratory vinous events deem it relevant to communicate the “judges’ findings and impressions” on the reams of wines that were subjected to the panels’ judicious and acute sensorial faculties.

This is tricky terrain for the respective judges to navigate, as judging is unsighted. Meaning judges don’t know which parcels of earth the wines that were judged originated from. They have not a clue as to the vinous techniques involved. And in many instances, not even the vintages are divulged before their skill is unleashed on the rows of liquid-bearing glasses before them.

Yet, due to the organisers’ wish for gravitas and communication air-time, opinions have to be delivered in the form of a communique sent out onto the world which is, hopefully, struggling to contain its excitement in discovering the results of said competition.

Thus, the meaningless commentary comes in when press releases and social media posts are sent out into the world.

“Judges were impressed by the extraordinary display of quality and nuance in this year’s line-up, a lot of accurate fruit forwardness being present, with the right degree of intuitive restraint assisting winemakers in maximising optimal ripeness to a degree of unconvoluted clarity and charm.”

“Overall, wines of deep and meaningful complexity underscoring the fact that the cultivar and its makers are both in a good space, and were right to enter the competition, and they should continue doing so next year. Lees contact and rigorous commitment to cellar hygiene has delivered extraordinary results in pursuing wines presenting flavour, structure and finesse in an overall display of excellence.”

“Judging this line-up shows winemakers are definitely understanding the grape variety better than ever, thus employing thoughtful cellar-techniques to honour their terroir, which is the key to winemaking relevance, something producers not only understand, but show true commitment to, something that can only bold well for the future and when they enter next year.”

(To be repeated when asked to comment after next year’s judging.)

The gushing generalised diatribes of these “judges’ findings” always causes one to wonder how on earth there are to be winners, lesser winners and losers by the time the results roll around. It is akin to announcing to the world that Cape Town is a city exclusively inhabited by warm-hearted, generous and embracing people, and then having to discover two mates were mugged while hiking on Table Mountain.

I mean, what would one truly expect the judges to say when prodded for comment by the organisers in search of publicity and desire to increase the number of entrants for the next year?

“Yes, some nice wines, but Christ, there were some so full of alcohol and over-ripeness I needed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after the first flight.”

“Obviously, some wines are created more equal than others, and man, it sure showed in the line-up. Unlike the pay-cheque for judging, it was all pretty inconsistent.”

The Trophy Wine Show at least has its judges facing the audience of journalists and winemakers in person, which generally leads to greater detail from the assembled panel, as well as allowing the audience to raise questions should vacuous comments and answers arise.

Generally, though, judges feedback PR puff is something competitions can do without. Jump straight to results, as this is all that counts.