Being one of the wineries where my love of da vino  began, I have always had a soft spot for Fairview. Though when I first visited the farm 30 years ago nobody would have guessed that the joint would turn into the mammoth and diverse enterprise it is today.

If you are not being stared at by a goat perching on some wooden steps leading up a tower, you are shoving a chunk of cheese in your mouth. Fairview’s wine-tasting area must be the most accommodating  in the industry: capable of handling hundreds of visitors a day in an orderly fashion without looking like a Hong Kong train station.

There are more labels and brands under the Fairview umbrella than there are adjectives in the Platter Wine Guide, and all this is supported by a marketing machine which has ensured the mother brand being marketed in more than 40 countries.

But it’s not just hype. At the heart of Fairview lies some extraordinary wines of great quality without which a successful brand is just not able to survive.

Okay, stop for press release from the farm:

 Fairview lifted a host of prizes at this year’s key international wine awards including gold medals for the Fairview Shiraz 2008 and Spice Route Malabar 2006 at the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, as well as gold for the Cyril Back 2007 at the 2010 Decanter World Wine Awards. Fairview also gathered eleven silver medals from the two competitions, together with the recent International Wine Challenge, marking a remarkable success for the family-run business based in Paarl.

 The awards are a testament to the hard work of winemakers Anthony de Jager, who manages the Fairview label, and Charl du Plessis responsible for Spice Route, and their respective teams. Production of consistently award winning wines and a maverick approach to brand building has allowed the company to achieve continued success into 2010, despite tough economic times.

 Comments Charles Back of the latest accolades, “We are selective about the small number of competitions we enter, as the opinions we most value are those of our consumers. However being judged as producing great wine by international experts makes me very proud of our wine making teams and their outstanding contribution to the company’s success.”

                                                                                                End press release

 Okay, that’s all very nice and well-deserved. Fairview has always been one of the leaders in Shiraz, bringing together classical Boland power and New World fruit-driven juiciness. The Cyril Back is – along with the Jordan 2003 – my benchmark for South African Shiraz.

One must not, however, forget about the action on the white side. Here there are some real ballsy wines, styles of which have inspired the Nouveau Sexy Swartland set. Think the Oom Pagel Sémillon with its dusty dried peach and waxy notes. Fairview Viognier has also shown the way in  a grape which whilst fashionable, has caused a few bumped heads in the local wine industry.

But bumped heads are not an issue if you’re wearing horns.

Picture: WINE MAGAZINE

The Crystallum Cuvée Cinema Pinot Noir 2008 is a wine that gets one thinking. This I like. Although a wine that leads to introspection and thought does not automatically make it a good one. I have spent many an evening tossing and turning over a vinous disappointment, reliving a ghastly over-tannic experience and wishing slow and painful death upon the smooth-talking wine-dealer who sold me that particular ringer.

The Crystallum Cinema is, however, a very, very good wine.

Okay, let’s get the PR talk out of the way. It is made in the revered Hemel-en-Aarde Valley by two dudes from the Finlayson winemaking dynasty. Not the Walter section, but the Peter part – that is Peter Finlayson of Bouchard-Finlayson fame.

These Finlaysons are his sons – Peter-Allan and Andrew. Aforementioned is the winemaker. The other an architect. They are young, cool and look like characters from a Coen brothers movie before the schizophrenia sets in.

The words “hip” and “happening” spring to mind, although a hair-cut is in order, and for two young wine dudes the incomplete and sparse website www.crystallum.co.za sucks, but this is all beside the point.

Crystallum Cuvée Cinema 2008 has a lot of hype. First wine to get 5 Stars in Wine Magazine. The bottles rarer than objective sighted wine-tastings. But hey, I fell for it and scored six bottles from The Wine Village.

As any self-respecting freeloading wine journo knows, wines you actually have to pay for come up for far harsher scrutiny than those freebies delivered by smiling PR’s.

But the wine did all the talking.

I have only cracked one bottle so far and this was in the company of Danie de Wet, who along with Jan Boland Coetzee is the best wine-taster in the country.

Danie called it a “mooi wyn”, which is De Wet speak for very, very good.

This I can vouch for.

It is inky and dark. It is obvious Pinot on the nose. The palate is sumptuous and perfume, with lengthy seductive fruit verging on the promiscuous. We are talking Moroccan spice stalls and silk sari’s worn by high-class Indian call girls. We taste dates and dried fig, with a brush of sage, allspice and rosewater. It lies on the palate like a good memory passed through your lips on the wings of a lovely blue butterfly.

Yes, yes, it is Pinot Noir, and we can sense it. But there is no conventional forest floor or mushroom compost or widow armpit. There is an exotic abandonment in this wine which is quite extraordinary.

If I were to compare it to Burgundy, I’d have to look off the beaten track. Possibly, at a push, to Monthélie, and then an old wine from the 1980s.

And this is what I am thinking.

Pinot Noir is such a revered grape. One tends to expect Burgundy on the palate and winemakers tend to aim for Burgundy in the cellar. But a wine such as Crystallum is nowhere French, nowhere Burgundy. It is beautiful and it is very good and it is world-class. But it is South African.

True South African excellence does not have to take a step back for anyone. Make South African wines.

Because we is what we are.

- Faizel van der Vyver

Gallo, one of the biggest wine companies in the world, is bringing its Barefoot Wine range to South Africa. According to a Gallo source, the Barefoot wine range will be supported by a huge marketing drive into the country.

“The juice is practically on its way,” the source said. “Gallo is convinced that there is huge potential for brand-building in the South African wine market, which has not been exploited by local wine producers.

Barefoot Wines is one of Gallo’s most popular brands and has received critical recognition for its easy-drinking accessibility. The range that is expected to hit South African shores will include a bubbly, Merlot, Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Grigio.

Gallo’s foray into South Africa comes at a time when the local market is in a slump with brands pounding each other by competing on price and local consumption at a low of 6,5 litres per person per year.

But apparently Gallo sees something in the South African wine market other companies have not been able to pin-point.

Speaking at the AGM of Wine Cellars South Africa, Distell wine-supremo Carina Gous said: “If a company like Gallo has recognised an opportunity in the South African market that local brands have not see, we should all be concerned.”

But expect a Gallo in your vicinity soon. They are here.

In the world of wine anoraks, news that a wine has been disqualified from a competition is comparable to the rest of the world being told that Barack Obama has been unmasked by the CIA as a Taliban spy who sleeps with (male) goats. A competition scandal is about as pants wetting as it gets in the wine world.

So here we are, 2010 Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show. And after the results are announced, a few hours goes by before the news breaks: Zonnebloem’s Laureat blend has been stripped of its Gold Medal because it did not consist of pure Bordeaux varieties. Yes, it has a “dollop” of Shiraz juice, therefore making it un-Bordeaux.

Cool, we say. Rules is rules.

But ‘dem competition rules ain’t always easy to comprehend. Take Vergelegen’s V flagship wine. This wine has always been marketed and punted as a Bordeaux blend. So why was it entered – two vintages, nogal – in the Old Mutual’s Cabernet class?

Sure, according to legislation a wine labelled under a specific variety is allowed to have a 15% other-juice component. So Vergelegen could, technically, shun the more competitive Bordeaux blend section preferring to aim for Gold in the Cabernet Sauvignon division.

But this is misleading, as the wine prefers to be marketed as a blend and flies this flag in the public eye. It should therefore be forced to play with the blend boys, not hang around in the Cabernet section.

Now think of the “disqualified” Laureat. The wine was kicked out because it had a 5% “foreign” component, namely Shiraz. But, were one to use the 15% leeway with which the V was permitted to muscle in on the Cabernet Sauvignon section, a producer could technically add 15% Shiraz or Viognier or Malbec to his Cabernet Sauvignon and still be allowed to enter this class. But whack in 5% Shiraz in a Bordeaux blend, and you get disqualified.

Question: If the addition of 5% Shiraz makes a wine unsuitable to qualify for Bordeaux blend status, why is a competition Cabernet permitted to add a dollop of what in normal-speak can be termed as “something else”?

Obama and the rest of the world won’t lose any sleep over this, but a bit of clarity would not hurt those following the travails of the anoraks.

                                                                                                                                                                                                    – Darien Morgan

Gerrie in the sushi zone.

HE’S got a glint in his eye and a knife in his hand. Gerrie. Gerrie de Beer. Sushi master. Not just any sushi master. Gerrie is sushi slicer supremo of Kakamas.

This is correct. Kakamas. A town of the small, quiet variety in the Northern Cape. Think Upington. Orange River. Meerkats and barbel.

Did I say “barbel” or is Gerrie just waving the knife in my direction to show me the honed steel and razor edge of a Japanese hara-kiri instrument? Because one thing we are not going to joke about is Gerrie’s sushi, which sure as hell ain’t made from some brutish barbel plucked from the murky depths of the Orange River. We are talking real fish for this sushi. Flown from Cape Town to Upington every second day before hastily transported to the Kalahari Gateway Hotel, where Gerrie’s sushi bar sits in the sprawling dining room.

I’m travelling with Jeanie T, a blonde of the sushi-loving variety, as most blondes tend to be these days. We sit next to the rotating sushi counter, which is situated under a couple of stylish cheap multi-coloured paper lamps hanging from the roof. We pick-up the menus welcoming us to Kalahari Sushi. I mention tuna prices, Japanese knife names, geisha kimonos and other chink specialities. Let the guy know we mean business. We know the gig around a sushi bar.

But Gerrie, he’s not baulking. He gives us the once over, lifts his knife and starts slicing. I order a bottle of Colombard from the Oranjerivier Wine Cellars and watch the kid working. His got flexible palms, nimble fingers. Cuts wafer-thin slices of yellow-fin tuna. Deftly skins an orange fillet of fresh salmon. Desiccates a plump avo.

Hey, but can this kid work a bamboo sushi mat or what? In goes the white rice. Spreads out the wasabi. Whacks in the avocado and the fish. Folds the mat. Rolls it firmly, quickly. He’s got great hands, and Jeanie T is licking her lips.

The rotating counter is switched on and gets going. And Gerrie starts piling on the plates. And it’s all there: salmon roses with proper Japanese mayo and caviar; ice white California rolls; perfectly formed Nigiri with salmon and prawn. Dig the rainbow and dragon rolls. Fashion sandwich and spicy rolls, coated with an orange crust of umami heaven.

We load the bowls with soya, snap chopsticks and fill glasses. And get eating.

The fish is sparkling fresh and clean and melts in the mouth. The rice is perfectly textured with just the right zing of sweet-sourness. This is sushi. In Kakamas.

Gerrie is watching as we pick, dunk and devour. He has that real Zen look of satisfaction, Gerrie does.

“How are the locals getting in on the sushi act?” I ask through a mouthful of cucumber-encased bamboo roll. He gives Jeanie T an eye.

“The ladies like sushi,” Gerrie says. “And they are teaching the men that raw fish is not all that bad.”

But just for the hell if it, Gerrie is going to be introducing some sushi items with game carpaccio once the Northern Cape hunting season gets going.

The spicy roll is a killer with a fierce kick leading into the taste of avocado and salmon and rice.

Gerrie is happy that we are happy, and we’ve had too much so he can start cleaning his knife and he shuts off the rotating sushi counter, shipped in all the way from Hermanus.

Afternoon in Kakamas with a belly full of sushi and wine. Life is good. We’ve got to get going. And so does Gerrie – he’s on duty in the bottle store this afternoon.

After sushi, it's time to look at the trees outside Kakamas.

Eighties pop band Talk Talk had a hit with the stirring number titled “It’s a Shame”. I listen to it often and this week I couldn’t help thinking it’s a shame that all the South African wine industry can do is talk talk.

Well, on one specific topic that is. And it’s called generic marketing of wine in South Africa or, to put it more directly, how to stop the slide in local consumption of what should be our national beverage.

During the AGM of Wine Cellars SA on Wednesday, blue chip marketer Bennie Howard sketched the problem. Some 25 years ago South Africans were putting back about 11 litres of the stuff per person per year. Currently this figure is between six and seven litres, which should not be the case.

In the 1980s you could count the number of SA producers on a bust abacus set. Chardonnay, Shiraz, MCC and Sauvignon Blanc were hardly on the map. Yet, with limited varieties and styles to their disposable, South Africans were looking like a nation with a wine palate. Surely things could only get better as the world-wide interest in wine as an “in” beverage surged from the mid-80’s?

Not. We are making some of the best wines in the world of immense diversity and at good prices. Yet South Africans are eschewing wine, while remaining prolific alcohol consumers.

Whisky, cider, beer, vodka categories are growing. Wine is fighting for survival.

And everyone is concerned, or should be – if you are in the industry, that is. Fine, huge growths in exports are great, but globalisation is a fickle bugger and it would be safer to bet on shares in Greek banks than growth in exports and value continuing to keep the local wine industry afloat over the next decade.

And this is where the talking comes in.

In the 1990’s the wine industry’s organisations and key players spent a few years working on a project called Vision 2020. This aimed to map a strategic path as to where the wine industry should by 2020, with the added sexy implication of clear-sightedness thrown into the concept for good measure.

Included in this ambitious talk shop was the subject of generic marketing of wine to bolster local sales.

Well, despite months and months of deliberation, Vision 2020 ended up at the same place where a lot of industry ideas tend to end-up – the scrap-heap of talked about plans and ideas that did not translate into action. Including, of course, the plan aimed at growing local wine consumption.

In 2004 the SA Wine Council, which now finds itself on the aforementioned scrap-heap held another chin-wag among industry big-shots to address the issue of the local promotion of wine on a generic basis.

You guessed it – talk talk. No action.

And then this wintry morning in May 2010 came around. Wine Cellars SA AGM. A panel of experts including Distell’s Carina Gouws and Mike Ratcliffe and Bennie Howard. Great presentations on the need to grow the local market.  All the members with pleading looks in their eyes, looks stating that the issue of growing the wine category in South Africa needs to be looked at seriously.

Wine is losing market share. Wine is losing value. The industry is bleeding. (Any ex Vino Broederbonder who wants to challenge this statement should have been in the hall to hear the plea of a producer who said that wine farmers are not only losing shelf-space, but also losing farms.)

There are some terrific minds in the wine industry that could grow the category locally. It doesn’t cost the earth. Just some passion. For example: as head of the SA Brandy Foundation Pietman Retief used generic strategies to grow the brandy category from 37m litres annually to 48m in five years.

But if we agree that the wine industry must do something to stop its share of the South African throat decreasing, it’s got to get off its arse. And for fuck’s sake, stop talking and start doing. It really is such a shame.

Neil Pendock

Good Value Guru and Swartland Swashbuckler Neil Pendock was recently imported by Portugal for a wine gig. Upon his return, he decided to eschew the mainstream press and satellite TV stations for an exclusive interview with WineGoggle.

What was your mission in Portugal?

Tasting for Aníbal Coutinho’s blind-tasting wine guide Guia Popular de Vinhos which will be published in Portuguese in September.

Is there a future in exporting wine critics for service to other countries?

Definitely, if it can advance the cause of blind-tasted assessment.  Anyone can do business class golf jaunts to the Third World, taste the products of your host sighted and wax lyrical.  Sighted assessment is a scam – in the May edition of Good Taste magazine editor Colin Collard reveals that “Last year we gave Platters more than half a dozen examples where their judges had given different scores to identical wines – the only difference being in the packaging and the names on the bottles.”  Which would be a joke if local supermarket chains did not use these dishonest ratings to list wines.  

Is Portugal the next Big Wine Thing from Europe?

Unfortunately not for SA consumers as Portuguese producers are still incredibly parochial – focusing on Portuguese speaking markets like Angola and Brazil and dealing with Portuguese ex-pats in SA rather than the best importer/retailer available. 

Are there any specific cultivars you think would adapt particularly well here in SA?

Arinto and Alvarino – and that’s only white cultivars starting with “A” – they have over 300 others.  To see why, taste them.

In which regions should they be planted?

Warm appellations like the Paardeberg.

We in SA are obsessed with signature varietal(s). Is there a specific wine or cultivar that holds the Porra flag, or are they not concerned about it?

Touriga Naçional is the big name, but each region has a local hero.  For example, the Bonny and Clyde of Bairrada is Baga (red) and Maria Gomes (white). 

Did you tell the Porras that their wine is scarce in SA and they should do something about it?

Yes. 

That being cork country, has the move to screw-cap cottoned on?

No. 

How much bacalhau can a human eat in two weeks?

We were served it five times until Luan developed a lucky psychosomatic fish allergy that we told our hosts about before we arrived.

Certain SA wine critics reckon you can’t taste wine properly with food containing garlic. This is surely not applicable to Portugal?

In Portugal, you can’t taste wine without garlic in the food as then the food tastes odd.

What can the Porras teach us about wine marketing?

There is more to life than Bordeaux blends, Burgundy and bowties.

I’ve got this flash (non-Riedel) decanter, the one with the phallic neck leading towards a flat fish-bowl space of glass big enough to hold four bottles of wine. It’s always a bit of a talking point when I pour purpley red wine into it as the crimson curtain of Shiraz, Cabernet or whatever has a sensual visual appeal.

Point is: what is the rule of thumb when it comes to choosing wines to decant?

Take the tale of two Bordeaux. One the real deal. The other a South African blend.

First up, Glen Carlou Grand Classique, the Estate’s five-way blend dominated by Cab and Merlot.

I have always found this wine a bit steely, hot and tight as a Jewish virgin holding a R100 note between her knees. This goes for Grand Classiques of five to seven years old.

The other evening I popped a 2006 and glugged it into the decanter, giving the thing a bit of a swirl. I left it for 30 minutes and when drinking time came, it was a totally different wine to the one I had come to know. It had aired out with a delicious blossomy fruit core, yoga-supple tannins and a pleasant hint of sage. A corker and on a totally different level of the Grand Classiques I had always had from the bottle. (Poured straight into a glass, Koos, not sipped from it.)

A couple of days later I hauled out a Château Calon Ségur 1981, one of my favourite St Estèphe numbers and about the only thing I have in common with whacko actor Johnny Depp who also “digs” this wine, although I don’t know how well it goes with a joint of Algerian red.

Dumping it into the decanter, a heavenly aroma filled the room. Ploughed fields, a kelpy sea breeze, wild strawberries and cedar. Pouring the wine into the glass I couldn’t help thinking of that great line from the Al Stewart song “Year of the Cat” that goes: “She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a water colour in the rain”.

I let the wine stand for 15 minutes and after saying a quick prayer to Bacchus and Charlemagne poured the wine into the glass. Bugger-all. Nada. Kaput. Zilch. The wine was stripped of aroma and scant on flavour, as if the puff of excessive air had caused some wine-thieving angel to sneak off with all the heavenly tastes the wine showed six months ago when I had it straight out of the bottle.

I’ll decant younger stuff, but it looks like splashing the older wines around is a bit of a gamble. And I’m not prepared to lose any more older wines.