The ugly side underpinning the wine industry is often too easily ignored.
Put fire in your wintry belly! If ever there’s a time to indulge in rich, alcoholic, delicious fortified wines it is now.
Out of the great revolution in South African wine we’ve seen in the past few decades, something of a contradiction is emerging.
<b>Tim James</b> writes about his role as a wine critic for <i>Platter’s</i>. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.
Foreigners still arrive to share in the Cape winelands — not in a deluge but in a reassuringly constant trickle.
Given the remarkable advances in South African wine in the past 15 years, it’s easy to assume that before then all was dross.
The prestige of wine competitions is somewhat tarnished by the subjectivity — and fallibility — of the judges.
There’s often room to sneer when so-called "wine experts" presume to give advice.
Artist Cecil Skotnes, who died a little more than two years ago, had what Michael Fridjhon called an "extraordinary appetite for enjoyment".
Artist Cecil Skotnes had an ‘extra-ordinary appetite for enjoyment’. Vital to this was his profound love of wine.
<b>Tim James</b> ventures that all South African wine producers aspire to the condition of Kanonkop.
Wineries create a space that stimulates the senses and encourages a broader enjoyment of sensory pleasures, including their art collections.
Excelsior wines are designed to attract those wary of character and interest, wanting easy gratification.
It’s hard nowadays to realise how unimportant grape varieties were to drinkers a century ago when the Europeans had amonopoly of top-end stuff.
The cynical wine producer sets a price so excessively above his wine’s value that he’s clearly strategising beyond mere sales.
Poor old merlot is just the whipping boy, critics suggest, with the same inherent problem of many black grape varieties in the Cape.
Hermanuspietersfontein — if you’re a lover of sauvignon blanc, you will probably have had the time to unwind the length of the name in your mind.
It was with the tiniest sigh of relief that I passed through an inconspicuous door in the splendid Delaire building complex.
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/ 25 February 2011
Not fancying an evening of Abdullah Ibrahim on an empty stomach, we looked around for an early quick fix of food and wine.
A confession, with the taste of three lovely wines still lingering on my tongue and no doubt fuzzing my mind.
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/ 9 February 2011
If you have ever noticed someone raising a glass of water to drink but pausing to give it a good reflective sniff, it’s perfectly explicable.
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/ 2 December 2010
It’s not all that frequently that, in my modesty, I concur with the awards made by judges at the many wine competitions, writes <b>Tim James</b>.
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/ 23 November 2010
What a difference a decade has made for Nederburg, writes <b>Tim James</b>
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/ 4 November 2010
We’re still stuck with a lot of sameness. If KWV had been more oriented towards quality, where would they have found interesting varieties?
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/ 29 October 2010
<b>Tim James</b> discovers that the best way to enjoy good wine, is to improve the quality of the glasses it’s drunk out of.
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/ 22 October 2010
Adi Badenhorst explains the humble tool that makes you feel like Michelangelo in the morning
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/ 22 October 2010
Each time <strong>Tim James</strong> loves driving through the gates of Rustenberg estate, one of the most beautiful drives up to a winery.
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/ 19 October 2010
Pressed against the mountain, above the splendid Franschhoek valley, is the new small vineyard site from which Gottfried Mocke will make a pinot noir.
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/ 17 September 2010
There are five important red-wine grapes associated with Bordeaux in southwest France, chief among them the noble cabernet sauvignon.
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/ 3 September 2010
Many of the wines on the Cape Winemakers’ Guild auction are in some ways bling for the table.
It shook me when an acquaintance asked recently what "syrah" signified on a wine label, writes <b> Tim James</b>.