What I Drank Last Night

The Cape Winemakers Guild recently announced the results of blind tastings of some of this year’s auction wines by James Molesworth of Wine Spectator and Steve Tanzer of International Wine Cellar. Molesworth gave 27 of 32 wines tasted (out of a total of 39) 90 points or more on the 100-point scale, whilst Tanzer gave [...]

When wine commentators Michael Fridjhon, Tim James, Neil Pendock, Chrisitine Rudman and I convened to taste the line-up of 2010 Cape Winemakers Guild Auction wines, it was agreed to score according to the 100-point system and individual scores were captured. For interest, the arithmetic average scores of the wines involved appear below : 91.8 Tullie [...]

The luxurious and consequently not inexpensive Grande Roche in Paarl might have been an incongruous venue to judge entries submitted for inclusion in WINE magazine’s 2010 Best Value Wine Guide but pleasurable even so. With the process complete by lunch time yesterday, hotel GM Gawie Marx treated his fellow panel members to lunch on the [...]

Tasting for WINE magazine’s 2010 Best Value Wine Guide  began this week, entries for possible inclusion amounting to 969 compared to 1 093 in 2009. Judges include Christine Rudman CWM in the capacity of floating chair, Carrie Adams of Johannesburg retailer Norman Goodfellows, Ginette de Fleuriot of Wineworx, Gawie Marx, general manager of the Grande [...]

Tasting my way through wines to be rated for the 2011 edition of Platter’s, I’ve come across one or two that I think might be in the running for the guide’s ultimate accolade of 5 Stars. The way that Platter’s works is that all wines are tasted sighted (labels exposed), except for those nominated for [...]

Wine writer Neil Pendock has once again posed some provocative questions concerning the state of the South African wine criticism  in two of his recent columns (see “Are SA wines really getting better?” and “Is wine appreciation generationally dependent?”). Pendock seems to be advancing a postmodernist perspective by rejecting the notion of progress (specifically he [...]