Melvyn Minnaar

Charm and the Heartbreak Grape

~ emile ~ 1 Comment

I had always struggled to nail my precise feeling towards Pinot Noir when Danie de Wet did it for me. “You find three kinds of wine: red wine… white wine,” the Sage from De Wetshof said, “and then you have Pinot Noir.” This was over a decade ago when De Wet had been busy at playing pioneer again – not Chardonnay, but by making the first Pinot Noir in the Robertson Valley.

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The deceptively simple and seemingly innocuous description stuck, and the more Pinots I drink the more on-the-button Danie’s words appear.

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Confessions of a Serious Wine Dud

~ emile ~ 5 Comments

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That small curly black hair perched next to his crusty, ravaged orifice resulted in an irritable missive by Tim James on Grape. Writing about an expensive wine released by Bilton Estate, his criticism was not only leveled at the producer of this R3,000 bottle, the way the wine was made nor the winemaker that assisted on the project.

No, Timothy also had a go at the media, implying that most of those invited to taste this wine were not serious wine journalists. Obviously considering himself as a member of the latter, he writes: “I haven’t tasted the wine and am unlikely to. The serious end of wine journalism was largely not invited to the launch?+¦-+???+¦-ú?-¦?+¦-+?-+.”

This statement did, of course, have the desired effect of urging journalists to comment on the whole do, as can be found in the notes under the article I have linked here.

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