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 [...]

The eight annual Tri Nations Wine Challenge saw New Zealand emerge as the winning country overall. Results were announced in Sydney on Friday 17 September. Craggy Range Te Muna Road Vineyard Pinot Noir 2008 took the Red Wine of Show and also Four Seasons Hotel Wine of Show. McWilliams Mount Pleasant Lovedale Semillon 2005 took [...]

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 Wine Judging Academy convened by WINE magazine and Michael Fridjhon was privileged enough in its first two years of existence to attract the services of the late Bill Baker, UK wine merchant by trade and devotee of the good life by nature. He had a wonderful expression for wines that he particularly liked, describing [...]

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 [...]

Previously published on Winemag.co.za in December 2008 (has anything changed?): Do local wine writers have the necessary talent, work ethic, integrity and self-promotional skills to succeed? According to wine writer Neil Pendock, “SA wine writing is in disarray” and it’s hard to disagree. As he noted in his blog Pendock Uncorked earlier this week, “Fynproe, [...]