Melvyn Minnaar : Potable pleasures
It is the enfant sauvage, if not the fils terrible, of the wine-making business. Of true French nobility with deep historical roots, the Sauvignon Blanc grape has seldom been tamed by the wannabes of the New World vineyards. It either runs wild on them or terrorises them into submission.
South Africas keepers of the vine have had their fair share of battles with this fashionable varietal of the 1980s. Most have surrendered to wine of characterless bulk, happy to have Sauvignon Blanc sanctioned on the label. Others have tried to rise to the challenge, and it is to those local stalwarts that we can toast triumphantly the harvest of 1997 which has probably produced the best Sauvignon Blanc wines ever.
Gyles Webbs elegantly-flamboyant Thelema Sauvignon Blanc, a cool-climate version from the slopes of Simonsberg, is now at its 10th vintage and was sold out in days.
Part of the reason for the great Sauvignon Blanc vintage is late rain, which resulted in mildew that wiped out a lot of grapes. The remaining yield did, however, deliver on concentration of flavour, if not an abundance of juice and bottled wine.
If Webbs version is not quite as cunningly seductive in the complex French way as Robinsons benchmark Loire versions, it lingers on the nose, in the mouth and, importantly, in the aftertaste.
Sauvignon Blanc has an immediately recognisable aroma that is part of its charm. Scientists have identified the reason, unromantically, as the presence of methoxypyrazines. So while taste descriptions can vary from gooseberries to cats pee, savouring the sauvage is the thing.
Another top one this year is Abrie Bruwers Springfield Sauvignon Blanc from Robertson. If this is the feminine side of the savage, Bruwer puts a potent spin on a prevailing personality.
The chaps in that other crowning region, Constantia, are also good at creating character. This years Buitenverwachting continues a tremendous tradition. In the Franschhoek region, John Loubser has a particularly European touch which makes his Mreson softly flinty and fruitily complex.
Ignoring the bland, also-ran Sauvignon Blancs, and trying the top contenders of the 1997 vintage will prove that this wild wine can purr like an elegant pussycat of vinous pleasure in South Africa. Lets drink it.
@Bidders hustle for TV channel
The creation of a new television station will be the biggest deal in South Africas media history. Each of the bidders for the new channel estimates it will have to raise about R500-million to get it up and running.
In comparison, baked beans king Tony OReilly bought the majority shareholding in Argus Newspapers in 1994 for less than R100-million. It was a snip for the ownership of the majority of South Africas newspapers. Primemedia paid R320-million for the long-established SABC Gauteng cash cow, Radio Highveld.
But television, the most expensive medium of all, is going to consume and attract the megabucks.
Each of the seven bidders for the television channel is preparing for the courtship of its career. They will flounce and fawn and boast a little in the wooing of the woefully harassed regulator, the council of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA).
In preparation for this, bidders have now handed in to the IBA literally tons of paper, on more than 10000 pages filled with hundreds of thousands of words in documentation, to support their claims to be the best.
Some of the bidders have been in the game from the beginning and have taken more than two years in preparation, and the combined cost for the seven to get to this point is probably around R20-million.
The IBA is hoping to be able to get around to public hearings for the new TV licence before the end of the year, and that process is going to carry forward until 1998. If all goes well, then there will be a decision next March, when the life of this IBA council ends. The optimists among the bidders say it will take six months to be up and ready to broadcast. Others say it could take a year. And so maybe there will be a new television service in place before the 1999 elections.
One bidder, Afrimedia, say it can be up and running in three months after the awarding of the licence because it plans to use existing excess capacity of the Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation.
The hearings for the new television licence will be unique in the broadcasting world, because pure commercial considerations are not the only criteria.
The IBA has already set out certain parameters and among the prime considerations will be who is going to get rich from the new channel. Each of the seven groups has assembled a black empowerment component.
All will have to have a business plan in place, and every bidder must satisfy the IBA it can raise the money to deliver a fully-fledged channel, which will carry news, sport and entertainment and must deliver a minimum amount of locally- produced programmes.
All of them say they will do just that with some variations. And it is these variations that will tax the IBA regulators, three of whom were only appointed to the council on September 1.
All of the bidders say they are going to broadcast mainly in English, and some emphasise regional programming more than others. Station for the Nation, one of the long-established bidders, will be a publisher broadcaster; sub-contracting much of its programming to independent producers.
Community Television Network is emphasising its plan for regional splits, to deliver some programming in local languages, and Free to Air has pledged that more than 50% of its programming will be locally produced.
One of the new consortia among the bidders, temporarily called New Channel TV, says it will bring French expertise to South Africa.
@The sound of muzak?
Gwen Ansell : In your ear
The marketing men just cant leave music alone. They have chipped away at the challenge of jazz to create smooth jazz, and theyre busy reconceptualising the serious stuff as classics lite. Classics lite is symphony orchestras playing Lennon and McCartney and all those albums which stitch together scraps of major works under a thematic title like Twenty Great Classic Tracks for Lovers.
As a fan of neither smooth jazz nor classics lite, maybe I was the wrong person to task with listening to the first broadcasting week of new radio station Classic FM.
I have this quaint old-fashioned belief that if a composer wrote a four-movement symphony, he intended it to be heard as a whole, not in quarters and that good music in any genre is stuff which demands that you listen and are moved.
At its most relentless, Classic FM resembles acute dyspepsia after a diet of Your Hundred Best Tunes. Bits from Mozarts Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Greigs Holberg Suite and the flaccid, prettied-up piano duets of the Labeque sisters keep repeating on you. But, that said, at its best it is a great deal better than I expected from a station built around a marketing formula.
It has presenters who sound knowledgeable and who, mercifully, say only what they need to, dont try to sell themselves as personalities and dont get in the way of the music. The music is generally more interesting than the wrinkly white pop tunes long past their sell-by date. Commercials are kept in one place every hour, so theyre easy to avoid.
And not all its virtues are negative. This week, Classic FM has been the only bulletin to keep Di-hysteria within reasonable limits and present different stories in an intelligent analytical framework.
Some music slots also succeed in doing rather more than rolling out the classic karaoke fodder: Mary Rorichs informative afternoon analysis of composers and operas, for example.
Theres jazz from Paula Abrahams and Zanele Magosos choral music programme is a real joy: unforcedly varied and infused with the enthusiasm of its presenter.
And on Sunday afternoons, a programme called Classic Discovery promises to explore less well-known composers and even look at modern serious music.
At its launch function, the station promised something like the best of the worlds classics. The bulk of the music comes from mid-19th-century Europe.
What about the beautiful classical kora music of the Mali courts, and sitar music from India? From Europe, the Baroque era and the Middle Ages are sadly under- represented, as are even the most accessible of 20th century composers. And African music African-American composers like Anthony Davis, Africans like Dumisani Maraire and Professor Mzilikazi Khumalo, serious composed jazz like the works of Wynton Marsalis, intricate traditional music like Pedi percussion and Xhosa singing where is its place on this station? (This station is, after all, based in Africa, unlike its sister in London).
Even if 90% of Classic FMs airtime has to travel the middle of the musical road to please the marketing men, what people like depends partly on what they are given the opportunity to hear.