10 October 2009

Pinotage triumphs at WineX

The public overwhelmingly voted for 'coffee and choc 'Pinotages at last months three day wine show, WineX, held in Cape Town.

Visitors are given a voting form on which to record the best wine of the show. This year the three top red wines were Diemersfontein Pinotage 2008, KWV Café Culture 2009 and Barista Coffee Pinotage 2009, and the Diemersfontein Pinotage was the most ordered wine at the show.

South African wine columnist Neil Pendock contrasted the popularity of this style of Pinotage with its lack of success in the Pinotage Top 10 competition winners and its lack of stars in the Platter Guide, which Pendock bizarrely blames on Platter tasting wines sighted although this style of Pinotage is unmistakeable when tasted blind.

As Christo Volschenk commenting on WineGoggle said "It’s the only industry I can think of where you are praised when you reproduce yesterday’s tastes (products) perfectly and ridiculed when you produce (apparently quite legally) new tastes (products)."

Interesting that Barista came last since that was the one made by Bertus Fourie who invented this style while at Diemersfontein and later created KWV’s version. Have his students surpassed the master, or is it that more people tasted the well known brands than the newly released Barista?

WineX will be held in Johannesburg 27 - 30 October 2009. Will Pinotage triumph again?


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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous15:12

    As to your second-last question: it's obviously the latter. Diemersfontein Pinotage is a commercial brand. Most of its followers don't care who made it or what vintage they buy/drink. It's very clear that in wine, like many other things, popularity doesn't equal quality.

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