Message from Margaux: skinny from China

Right on cue, Ch’ng Poh Tiong confirmed my suspicion that Pinotage is South Africa’s gift to the People’s Republic. His Asian Sommelier Guide 2009 reports on “the most interesting wine competition in China” which took place on Friday 13th March at Maxim’s Solana restaurant in Beijing. The Grape Wall Challenge aimed to find “good but affordable wines and to involve consumers in the process.”

Best blind rated red by a panel of consumers was Foot of Africa Pinotage 2006. The same wine came last when judged by a panel of experts at the same tasting. The experts were on a roll as their best rated white, a Concha y Toro Frontera Sauvignon Blanc 2007 from Chile, was rated worst white by the consumer panel. You couldn’t invent this material.

Michelin superstar Thierry Marx showing Poh Tiong some Kung Fu moves this morning

Poh Tiong is publisher of The Wine Review, oldest wine publication in South-East Asia. He trained as a lawyer, which could come in handy as in a letter from the publisher in the Asian Sommelier Guide 2009 he calls Hubert de Boüard de Laforest the “Robert Mugabe of Bordeaux proprietors.”

The pair have had a very public fallout over Poh Tiong’s description of Hubert’s Château Angélus 2007 as “oak/wood and merciless. Major HELP! Second worst wine of the Primeurs. Where’s the angel in this?” at the en primeur Bordeaux blind tasting earlier this year. Which makes you realize how well mannered SA wine magazines are – perhaps this is why they’re an endangered species?

Hubert is involved with Lowell Jooste of Klein Constantia fame in the Anwilka joint venture on the Helderberg. Poh Tiong lives in Singapore, hopefully safe from the swinging handbag or Foot of Africa of Grace Mugabe who recently attacked paparazzi in Hong Kong where she and Bob have a home. Let’s hope Poh Tiong can avoid the Bordeaux Boot of Hubert at Vin Expo in Bordeaux this coming week.