Curating wine

Alex Dodd’s review of the Kendell Geers exhibition Third World Disorder appeared in the July edition of Wanted, a supplement to Business Day. The review kicks off at the Kimberley Hotel in downtown Cape Town. Alex is sipping a “dodgy Portuguese wine amid a group of purposefully obtuse hipsters with long fringes and skinny-fit trousers”. Aficionados of Portuguese potations will not be surprised at Alex’s disappointment, as why drink at the Kimberley when the Dias Tavern is just round the corner?

After all, Portuguese terroir stretches from the vineyard all the way to the bar. The exhibition itself was held at the Goodman Gallery in Woodstock and, since mathematician and reclusive billionaire Jonathan Beare bought the operation from Linda Givon, liquid refreshments have looked up. At the Kendell Geers opening there was a choice of Singleton single-malt and Heineken beer in bottle. Which begs a question. Why, when it comes to marketing, do foreign drinks companies get it right? Design or accident?

Do brandy ambassadors think Woodstock too infradig for their brands or do the hipsters who attend openings prefer imported beer? And what happened to those arrangements of processed cheddar that made openings all the rage in Jozi in the ‘80s when Kendell was “South Africa’s dark errant prince of conceptualism”? So many catering questions, so few answers.

But wine can learn a lot from art. Certainly Alex’s review has a few choice paras to be deployed at the launch of the next oxidative Chenin blend from the Paardeberg: “If it weren’t for critics and curators imbuing these kinds of narcissistic tactics with the poetics of urgent profundity, how much emptier could this moment actually get?”

Wine has critics for Africa, but what about curators? Enter Ross Douglas, the Charles Saatchi of SA art: producer of William Kentridge’s wildly successful (21 000 tickets sold) The Magic Flute (you may have seen the scenery recycled as labels on some fashionable cuvées) and facilitator of the annual Joburg Art Fair, which had over 10 000 art lovers through its trendy doors in April.

So when Ross broached the subject of curating the wine component of his November Food, Wine, Design Fair at the Sandton Convention Centre, my nostrils twitched as if in the presence of a Romanée-Conti. The same reaction as befell De Telegraaf social columnist Willem Kool after sniffing Neil Ellis’ Rodanos red blend in June. Pencil-thin American Justin Rhodes, who founded the Neighbour Goods Market at the Biscuit Mill in Cape Town in 2006, is curating food while Trevyn and Julian McGowan are handling craft, furniture and product design.

Justin was at the Kendell opening, shod in amazingly pointed Rip van Winkle winklepickers and no surprise to report he owns the Whatiftheworld Gallery in Woodstock, confirming that food and art are already pre-conflated. So what will I curate? My first thoughts were of my homeboys on the Paardeberg and who better to coordinate the Swartland All Stars than Riebeek Kasteel bohemian boekhouer Anton Espost, who has a Balkan sensibility and a bizarre sense of humour.

Anton owns the Wine Kollective shop in Riebeek Kasteel and, if PPC come to the party (partly to redeem negative perceptions generated by their monstrous cement factory in Riebeek-Wes), the plan is to do an Edward Keinholz installation in an aluminium airstream caravan: Mao in lipstick and Mynhard Joubert from Bar Bar Black Sheep restaurant demonstrating how to clean sheep hearts. Matched to awesome Shiraz from Roundstone (made famous by Eben Sadie), Malbec from Annexkloof and oxidative Chenin from Orangerie, a cultural explosion of zef in the heart of Sandton.

Neil Pendock is wine writer for the Sunday Times and Financial Mail.