It came dangerously close to a major upset: France just pipped South Africa — but only with the help of a rather dodgy decision by the ref. The taste-match was one of a recent handful of World Cups of Wine organised internationally by winelovers (or opportunistic retailers, an occasionally overlapping category). This particular tournament was put on by a fewsmart wine-shops in Berkeley, California, and the first-round battle between South Africa and the world’s most famous wine culture was expected to be a walkover for France.
But not so, as the match organisers reported, after the sniffing and spitting was done: “Late into the evening we counted and re-counted the ballots. We couldn’t believe our eyes. We had a tie.”
That was when the dodgy bit came in, in place of a penalty shoot-out. Because France won two of the three top-rated wines, it was allowed to stagger off the field a relieved (though definitely shaken) victor. No matter that the Cape had produced the overall winner.
The top-voted wine came, appropriately, from Boekenhoutskloof, the Franschhoek producer that had been declared South Africa’s best winery in a recent survey I organised among a few dozen wine professionals.
The triumphantly delicious wine, The Chocolate Block, is sourced mostly from the Swartland area and made predominantly from the shiraz grape, with four or other varieties playing bit parts.
Perhaps its most noteworthy feature is that it is produced in vastly bigger quantities (approaching 200 000 bottles each year and rising) than any other local wine of such ambitious quality and price — about R170.
The vinous equivalent of Bafana Bafana did even better in another Wine World Cup, this one organised by English fine wine merchants, Bibendum, with “the crème de la crème of the London food and wine bloggerati” as judges.
Great and small nations fell aside as the South Africans and the Italians advanced to a pulsating final.
Player of the match seems to have been De Trafford winery from Stellenbosch, whose sweet Straw Wine 2008 scored the clinching goal.
Good stuff indeed for patriotic crowds at the foot of Africa — even if one suspects that the competitions were more of an excuse for some fun rather than sternly rigorous affairs. South Africa’s international status in the world of wine is a little more secure than it is in the world of soccer, but these results must still count as surprises.
So where were the ghastly vuvuzelas and the dancing in the streets of Stellenbosch when the triumphant news filtered through?
Back home, there are some “official” World Cup South African wines. These, however, were selected by the process Fifa prefers — that is, by handing over a large amount of money to Fifa.
Fortunately, the three Nederburg Twenty10 wines — a sauvignon blanc, a cabernet sauvignon and a rosé — are very respectable stuff and decent value, in line with the general offerings from this big brand that has improved so much in the past 10 years. No own-goal scored here.
Distell, the big-business owners of Nederburg, also paid heavily to emblazon their already breathtakingly successful cream liqueur, Amarula, with World Cup branding. Rumour has it that someone at Distell miscounted the number of noughts on the bottom line of the contract with Fifa. Surely not.