The old enemies
Brandy and whisky are fighting it out for local market share.
White rhino expert the Rt. Hon. Dickie Emslie (whose pater was Lord Justice-General of Scotland and looked after the Queen's castles north of the border) told me years ago that when anything good happens in England, it's a triumph for Albion; when it's bad, it's a disaster for the whole UK. Like losing to the Springboks in the final of the Rugby World Cup, a defeat that sparked off a rubber-fetish orgy with the UK wine media damning SA reds for reeking of burnt rubber that is only now blowing away like the smoke from a binnebraai.
In the January edition of Off Licence News, UK master of wine Tim Atkin concludes after a Christmas tasting trip to the Cape that SA "is now making better wines than any point in its history and is changing faster than any other New World country" - two incredibly broad statements that hosts and generic export body WOSA won't be complaining about.
Of course, Atkin proves that the Emslie effect doesn't apply in SA: all the wines Atkin sampled were from within a 30-minute helicopter flip of Cape Town but it is the whole country, from Grootdrink on the Groot Gariep to The Stables in KZN, that will reap any benefit. So when I was asked for a Christmas drinks special for a Sunday newspaper, I thought of a rugby re match and came up with a Cocktail Challenge: SA vs. UK, with brandy and whisky the weapons of choice, at dusk. Which saw photographer Araminta de Clermont and me descend
like the wolf of the Assyrians onto Long Street, Cape Town's glittering strip of art galleries and cocktail bars.
At that stage SA was still enjoying a trickle-down economy. Of every R100 Thabo and Sharon spend on consumer goods, R15 went on liquor according to the Alcoholic Beverage Review 2007 published by WINE's sister magazine, Hotel & Restaurant. Annual brandy sales were
up 10% to 49 million litres since 2004 - roughly one litre for every man, woman and laaitie - while whisky sales made like Mark Shuttleworth on a Sputnik, rising 50% from 22 to 32 million litres over the same period.
You didn't need to be Trevor Manuel to work out that the Scottish stuff would soon overtake brandy as SA's national spirit. In fact, 2007 had already seen a month of shame when whisky sales by value exceeded those of brandy for the first time in history. And whisky's finest hour came in October when George Naidoo from Midmar Liquors snapped up a bottle of Johnnie Walker 1805 for R370 000 (or R15 000 a tot) at a charity auction in the middle of an impressive Highveld thunderstorm.
But then came the global financial cataclysm, with sales of imported whisky now rumoured to have hit the proverbial brick wall. While some will buy down, from Blue to Black and Black to Red in the case of Johnnie, others will watch the hilarious ad for Richelieu being flighted in
Ster-Kinekor movie houses - a gorgeous topless Keanu Reeves-clone celebrating a birthday in Paris with "the taste of France" made in Robertson.
While whisky won the Cocktail Challenge by default, as our bar had no brandy, the UK victory was short but sweet - literally. The Smokey Monkey (burnt rubber revisited?) featured Monkey Shoulder - a blend of three tripled-distilled Speyside malts shamelessly modelled on an American Bourbon in taste (sweeter), packaging (quirky) and marketing (young), along with vermouth, Grand Marnier and apple juice. The only problem was that our Monkey was a grey import with the real MacQuitty not yet launched in SA.
Neil Pendock is wine writer for the Sunday
Times and Financial Mail.
