When it comes to the wine, don’t be a Pratt
Wine makers sour over stars
They complain that tasters are influenced by labels and packaging and one, whose wine obtained only one and a half stars, proved his point by inviting the tasters to his farm for another tasting, at which it got three and a half stars. That time the tasters were blindfolded.
Wine tasting isn’ t a science, but a subjective and personal process: even pros can get it wrong, let alone pseudos and casual tipplers.
On one occasion, I watched a pompous wine writer in a KWV tasting booth express contempt for a red wine he was asked to assess. KWV’s tasters had rated it “Superior” .
When I lived in Cape Town, a plastic surgeon arrived at my home in a Rolls-Royce for a wine-tasting party and proclaimed loudly that if he couldn’ t tell a cabernet from a cinsaut (hermitage), he’ d been wasting his money.
He found that he had. I didn’ t see him again, but my shares went up in the neighbourhood.
At the same party, the wife of a well-known theatre critic complained that the judging was faulty because she had got all six answers wrong (three whites and three reds tasted, first with labels, then in unidentified decanters, had to be identified by cultivar). I suggested she talk to her husband, who had all six right.
No doubt wine tasting has improved since the 1970s, when The Argus held its Wine Taster of the Year competition in Cape Town, but in that competition 200 semifinalists blind-tasted four reds and four whites and 12 went through to the finals.
One identified five of the eight wines by cultivar; another, four reds and a vintage year, leading to a taste-off. These were the elite of wine tasters in the Western Cape. The competition became a national event.
In another extraordinary blind tasting, involving nine people in the wine industry and 11 pedestrian white wines , the winner was Virginia, advertised as “wine for men who enjoy being men!”
My favourite wine story was written by Roald Dahl in his book Someone like You.
It concerns a celebrated gourmet named Richard Pratt. At dinner with a stockbroker, a serious bet is taken: if Pratt can identify a wine, he will win the man’s daughter in marriage; if not, he will lose two houses.
Pratt runs through the possibilities and names the wine correctly. When the bottle, breathing in another room, is fetched, Pratt’s reading glasses are found next to it.
The moral of the story is: try not to be a Pratt.