More dash than cash

In these straitened times, living the good life takes imagination.

Urban Word of the Day, the website that emails neologisms to keep you trendy, came up with a most appropriate one recently: "Econnoisseur: one who insists on the highest quality at the lowest price." As in, "Being an econnoisseur I bought the $10 Chilean wine instead of the $50 French."

 

A most unlikely econnoisseur is Nicky Haslam, the celebrated interior designer to celebrities whose 69th birthday party was the jol of 2008. According to the Daily Telegraph, he is the "epitome of the society decorator: a grey cashmere cardigan offsetting his artfully fluffed up corona of white hair, with tight trousers and winklepickers to add a touch of naughtiness".

Top of Nicky's celebrity pops was pensioner Sir Mick Jagger, rumoured to be dating Nicky's 23-year-old assistant, the gorgeously named Molly Miller Mundy. Molly's dad - one-time record producer for former Jagger girlfriend Marianne Faithfull - noted dryly: "I'm thrilled it's not Paul McCartney."

To drink: "An unusual Benedict Champagne". An unusual spelling, too, with Champagne Benedick described by the Telegraph as "a great value alternative to pricier names. It is rare to find Champagne of this quality at such a modest price". Sir Mick gave the party the flick after a bad case of déjà vu: back in 1964, Nicky threw the famous Mods and Rockers Ball for the Rolling Stones in New York photographer Jerry Schatzberg's Park Avenue apartment. Nicky had then recently fled London and his artist boyfriend, John Wishart, famous for celebrating his marriage to the daughter of a Canadian stockbroker with a twoday, three-night bender in the studio of Francis Bacon during which 200 bottles of Bollinger were consumed.

But that was in the heady days before econnoisseurship. In these times of economic doom and gloom, thrift is a virtue to be cherished - and one widely practised. Mastercard reported US sales of luxury goods down 25% in November. As the New Yorker wryly noted, "Sixty percent off is the new black." The bottom has fallen out of the luxury goods market and Manhattan is awash with seriously discounted designers, with columnar Valentino evening dresses slashed by 70% and a little black number from Comme des Garçons for $129. Bacchus is not immune to this tightening of Prada belts, with many local retailers, not keen to be quoted, telling tales of local icons offered at seriously deep discounts.

Overseas conduits like UK supermarket giant Tesco are squeezing suppliers past the pip-squeaking stage and punters are buying down. Which, perversely, could be good news for South Africa, the only nation to experience an average price-per-bottle drop in the UK (from £3.80 to £3.78) according to Nielsen figures published in trade magazine Off Licence News's Wine Report 2008.

So, could new financial realities see the demise of over-wooded styles with flavours of the forest replaced by those from grapes as barrel imports contract? If unsold stock piles up in warehouses, reds at least will have a chance to age. But perhaps the biggest win of all will be a paradigm shift from Mammon to Bacchus that will have SA wine lovers shimmying like Nicky in his scale model of a "bougainvillea-coloured" marquee from the Ziegfeld Follies, featuring a revolving dance floor, four-metre silver trees and a 14-piece orchestra from Paris playing Cole Porter...

Neil Pendock writes for the Sunday Times and Financial Mail. He judged at prominent international wine competition Concours Mondial this year.