The wine game can be a cynical place

It purports to explain why people smart enough to make a fortune in the first place then check out of a business they understand in order to expose themselves to the tough and uncertain world of cult wine.

It has a new take on the old adage about making a small fortune from a large one: "I asked my financial guy, 'When am I going to start seeing the money?' He said, 'About three years after you die.'"

There are several interviews with larger-than-life characters who, by their own admission, have paid $1m per hectare for land in an overcrowded, over-competitive "super-expensive small town defined by two roads and overrun by travelling bachelorette parties". They approach their investment with the cynicism of professional marketers.

Their views coincide with what Flavio Briatore (the man who heads Renault's Formula One racing team) had to say about his business in a recently published interview: "I don't love the cars.... The races are quite boring."

One of the article's story lines involves the latest project of Rich Frank (a former president of Walt Disney Studios) and Steve McPherson (president of ABC Television).

They are launching a wine at $250 per bottle - even though the rest of the cellar's products don't sell for anything like that sort of price, and even though at this stage none of their bottlings has attracted a serious Parker score.

Unfazed by this, they have already set up a high-profile auction lot involving six bottles of their wine (plus a first-class travel package for four to New Zealand) at the annual Napa Valley Charity Sale.

Helped by a few friends they nudge the parcel to near record price of $480 000 ("It's all for a good cause").

Every wine region needs an influx of new blood to upgrade the local DNA. In the past 20 or 30 years the Cape has seen a fair number of industrialists, advertising men, luxury goods merchants, smugglers, bankers, traders, rogues and accountants settle in the winelands and improve the quality of what was hitherto produced.

A few have used their own local variation of the Napa formula to launch their wines, but mostly they have succeeded by making good wines, and then marketing them properly.

We've also seen dozens of newcomers who have made the Cape a lifestyle choice and managed to survive (often in very trying times) without a big cheque book to keep the bailiff from the door.

Probably the best example of this less flash - but more entrepreneurial - producer is Ken Forrester.

From working at Gatriles in downtown Johannesburg he came in time to own the restaurant, finally exiting the world of dawn-to-midnight hospitality to become part of the 24/7 world of wine promotion.

Today the Forrester brand sells more than 100 000 cases. Much of it is exported - which means that Forrester spends more time on the road than he does in his winery.

His range runs from the bread-and-butter volumes of Petit Chenin to the R200-plus Rolls Royce white, The FMC - the latest vintage of which has added a Platter Five Star award to its wall of medals. His dessert wine - simply called "T" after his wife Teresa - finished among the gold medals at this year's Tri-Nations Challenge.

All this has been done by dint of hard work, no room for error and a careful segmentation of what the market could bear. Along the way he was helped by many friends - not least of whom was Martin Meinert (the "M" of the FMC).

The wine game can be the most cynical place on earth - but as Forrester (and many like him have proved) it's also peopled by hard-working human beings who talk a good talk, but also know how to walk it.