WineGoggle grabs face-time with the Dalai Lama on visas, his secret love of wine and the Lost South African Visit.

WineGoggle: How do you feel about the South African governmentΓÇÖs stalling on your visa to visit the country?

Dalai Lama: The brotherly spirit of transcendental love and the embracing of holistic humanity runs deep – and should run deep╬ô├╢┬╝Γö£├¡ – no matter how terse and abrupt the treatment one has received at the hands of others. But I still canΓò¼├┤Γö£├ºΓö£├╗t help thinking that the ANC can go and fuck themselves.

Walking around the streets of Beaune in September and October, one is often exposed to cheerful voices speaking Afrikaans to each other. These voices belong to South African winery and vineyard workers who are brought to Burgundy each year as part of one of the wine world’s unique social upliftment projects.
Since 2001, a number of workers from previously disadvantaged backgrounds have been sent to Burgundy to spend 10 weeks learning about the famous local wines as well as working a harvest on a domaine.
This project, of which the South African wine industry can be justifiably proud, is a collaborative effort between the Western Cape governmente and the Centre de Formation Professionnelle et de Promotion Agricole (CFPPA) wine training institution in Beaune.
Since its inception the course has been expanded to include programmes for coopers and sommeliers from the Western Cape, and currently over 40 “students” are sent to Burgundy each year to enrich their lives.
It is surprising that such a high profile initiative supported by local wine farmers, workers and agricultural bodies alike was excluded from the one-sided Human Rights Watch Report into South African wine workers. The few local commentators who supported the findings of this report should also really have known better and at least mentioned this Burgundy project and the many other initiaves Cape wine farmers proactiely support to improve the lives of the people who depend on this industry, and on whom the industry depends.

Got into Burgundy. Wished I was nowhere else. Headed from Dijon, south past the Mustard CityΓÇÖs urban sprawl. Dig the bowling alleys and pizza parlours. Then came the vineyards, and then the names: Gevrey-Chambertin. Vougeut. Vosne-Romanne. Nuits-St Georges. More Holy Grails than in a poker-hand of five aces.

Black gold, now thereΓÇÖs some good stuff under this description. Like the voice of Motown monster Barry White. A couple of barrels of Brent crude. Perigord truffles. Algerian hashish. Halle Berry in bikini.

But ever since I had it on a Robertson wine farm a few years back, Pedro Ximènez was always going to be the bestest blackest gold.

Cobus Joubert from Maison Joubert with brother Andries lurking in the background.

Cult, icon, legend…..we all so dearly want to award this status to a subject that captures our imagination. However, it is up to the specific subject to warrant this status by capturing the imagination in its way.

A quiet storm is brewing before this FridayΓÇÖs three-way intervarsity wine-tasting between the Universities of Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Rhodes on the Backsberg Estate in Simondium. Stellenbosch, victorious in the past two Vino Varsities, face a two-pronged onslaught from on-form UCT and enthusiastic first-time participants, Rhodes from Grahamstown.