Pinot Noir - high-society wine

Pinot Noir is not the wine of the common people. Quirky and off-centre, it is never going to be the variety that converts beer drinkers into wine drinkers. Appropriate then that the high-society Tollman family recently acquired Walker Bay property Bouchard Finlayson, which together with neighbouring Hamilton Russell Vineyards produces South Africa's most notable examples of this wine.

As to whose Pinot is ultimately the best, there's probably not much separating them. With debonair Anthony Hamilton Russell behind HRV, this may have been perceived as the more desirable, but the Tollmans' involvement has now made Bouchard Finlayson equally glamorous.

Patriarch Stanley Tollman is a former South African hotel and travel multimillionaire. He opened the five-star Tollman Towers in central Johannesburg in 1970, before leaving to build a hotel empire in the US.

Pinot Noir is elusive at the best of times, and so is Mr Tollman: he is wanted by the US authorities for tax and bank fraud. He allegedly swindled US banks out of $42 million (about R300 million), using an array of front companies and offshore accounts. It's believed he's currently residing in Britain, but attempts to have him extradited have failed so far.

Nevertheless, he and his family continue to run various business interests - from Red Carnation Hotels (which includes the Twelve Apostles in Cape Town) to properties in London, Palm Beach, and Geneva. For their amusement, they dabble in a bit of winemaking and hence the purchase of Bouchard Finlayson.

Current release Bouchard Finlayson Galpin Peak Pinot Noir 2002 sells for R165 a bottle from the farm. An exotic wine at an exotic price, but luckily matched by Stanley's exotic daughters, Vicki and Toni, who recently hosted a media day.

Proceedings began with a vertical tasting of the 1993 to 2002 vintages of the Pinot Noir. To accompany the wines, an array of canapés, because, as winemaker Peter Finlayson put it, "Pinot Noir talks a totally different language with food. To taste it without, is an injustice."

A fantastic line-up, but for me the 1997 vintage stood out, because of its excellent fruit concentration. Sunday Times wine writer Neil Pendock suggested this was a Pinot "for people who like Cabernet Sauvignon" and perhaps he is right but I prefer my Pinot Noir not to be too tantalising. The 1997 Tête de Cuvée (a barrel selection) won the Pinot trophy at the International Wine Challenge in London, so that's some kind of endorsement of the vintage.

It was suggested to Peter Finlayson that the most recent examples of the Pinot Noir were significantly superior to the earlier ones. Has he learnt to manage the vagaries of vintage better? "Not really. I just got rid of my previous shareholders," he replied, implying that financial constraints had somewhat hindered his efforts in the past. With the Tollmans on board, Bouchard Finlayson is set to get even better - presuming the feds don't catch up with Stanley too soon.

The tasting was followed by lunch at Birkenhead House, a new hotel in Hermanus, owned not by the Tollmans but by Phil Biden, the former CEO of the Board of Executors. Rates start at R3 900 a room, so only the glitterati will be staying there, but it was fun to sip Galpin Peak while watching whales frolic in the bay, and pretend for a few brief moments. As I said, Pinot Noir is not the wine of the common people.