Road trip

Visiting some of South Africa’s less high-profile cellars is a rejuvenating experience.Tom Waits is one of the most innovative songwriters around, an activity he describes as “like glueing macaroni to a piece of cardboard and painting it gold”. So transferring his skills to critiquing wine should be a doddle. Exhibit A is the first verse of his jazzy classic, Temptation: “Rusted brandy in a diamond glass/ everything is made from dreams/ time is made from honey slow and sweet/ only the fools know what it means/ temptation…”

 

An offering to Distell as an offbeat advertising jingle for Oude Meester’s new brandy, Demant, perhaps? Only problem is, the man don’t do endorsements. The last time someone tried to commercialise him, he trousered $500 000; punitive damages in a “voice misappropriation action” against Frito-Lay for using a singer to imitate his trademark hoarse-duck delivery (acquired through “drinking and smoking and staying out all night long”) in a radio commercial.

Waits has a refreshingly cynical take on life: “There is no such thing as truth. People who really know what happened aren’t talking. And the people who don’t have a clue, you can’t shut them up.” Truth and lies in SA wine writing are compounded by the 20:80 conundrum: 20% of producers speak English, the language in which 80% of the comment appears. Which means that commentators should get off the beaten track more – tricky to do when you’re based in Jo’burg, dependant on producer largesse.

Rather than wait for Godot or an invitation to the KKK (Kranskop, Kloovenburg and Koelenhof), I decided to hitch a ride with the Good Value Guru, my nom de palate for an amateur upcountry oenophile who visits the winelands twice a year to source supplies for his friends. He started back in 1983 and knows a few shortcuts.

After over 4 000km travelled, 75 wineries visited and well over 500 wines tasted, a couple of points precipitated themselves into the bottom of my tasting glass. First off, the big picture: the experience was overwhelmingly positive.

That said, it was disappointing to note how many oxidised and stale wines were poured: bottles opened the previous week, re-corked and kept in the fridge (a situation which obviously improves in season with turnaround time down to a few hours). A further issue was the bang-bang temperature control of fridges, especially in co-ops. Ethanol fortunately freezes at -114ºC; otherwise we’d be reduced to licking ice cubes.
Was it worth the effort? Most definitely. How else would a couple of Vernon Koekemoers from the former Transvaal find out about the R21/bottle Camerca red blend at Slanghoek Winery? Or Tseliso Rangaka’s M’hudi Sauvignon Blanc 2008 with intense flavours of peppermint and green beans? Or any other number of incredible-value gems with zero marketing budgets that never blast through the Grape Curtain?

An unexpected spin-off was the chance to meet “second label” winemakers – the backroom boys working in the shadows while more high profile identities go up to the podium to collect medals. Passionate techies like Henry and Jacques Conradie (Goedverwacht and Boplaas, respectively), Wikus Pretorius (Haskell Vineyards) and Brad Paton (Buitenverwachting).

But the biggest plus of all was professional rejuvenation. As Waits puts it, “My career is like a dog. Sometimes it comes when you call. Sometimes it gets up in your lap. Sometimes it rolls over. Sometimes it just won’t do anything. Recently it has been walking on its hind legs, doing cartwheels and even singing in tune.”

Neil Pendock writes for the Sunday Times and Financial Mail. He was a judge at Concours Mondial this year.