+ SA RESTAURANTS WHERE YOU CAN TAKE THEM! www.ramsaymedia.co.za Contents PUBLISHER Neil Piper Intro .......................................................................................................................... 2 What Best Value means ............................................................................... 4 Editorial EDITOR Sonya Schoeman Best Value rating system ............................................................................. 5 DEPUTY EDITOR Tyson Jopson ASSOCIATE EDITOR Caroline Webb How it works ........................................................................................................ 7 WRITER Fiona McDonald CONTRIBUTORS The judges ............................................................................................................. 8 Lynn Cloete, Anna Trapido COPY EDITOR Joanne Gibson Overall Best Value producer .................................................................. 10 PRODUCTION MANAGER Judy Romon Category winners .......................................................................................... 12 ART DIRECTOR Marisa Steyn The etiquette of corkage ........................................................................... 26 Best Value Wine Awards – Johannesburg and surrounds ............................................................ 28 EVENT MANAGER Kathryn Frew EVENT COORDINATOR Janice Bekker – Durban ............................................................................................................. 30 PANEL CHAIRPERSON Fiona McDonald – Port Elizabeth .............................................................................................. 32 WINE JUDGES Dr Winnie Bowman, Ntsiki Biyela, Praisy Dlamini, Karen – Pretoria and surrounds .......................................................................... 34 Glanfield, Sandy Harper AUDITORS Grant Thornton – Bloemfontein ............................................................................................... 36 Prices correct at time of going to print. – Cape Town ..................................................................................................... 38 All rights reserved. No part of this Results: Best Value ratings ...................................................................... 41 publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in Directory ............................................................................................................ 46 any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying or otherwise without the Tasting notes ..................................................................................................... 48 prior written permission of the copyright owners, RamsayMedia (Pty) Ltd, Howard Drive, Pinelands 7405. While reasonable precautions have been taken to ensure the accuracy of advice and information given to readers, the editor, proprietors and publishers cannot accept responsibility for any damages or inconvenience that may arise from incorrect information. ISSN 1013-8390 Company registration number 1934/005460/07 Introduction It’s been over two decades since What has happened to both South Africa celebrated its first South African wine quality and wine democratic elections, and the prices since then is nothing short significance of 1994 for local wine of amazing. At the rarefied top end, producers is that it signalled a return local and international consumers to the international trading fold. are happy to pay hundreds and For decades prior to that, South even thousands of rands for a single, African wine was an easy product to highly sought-after bottle. penalise, and local wine producers In these tough economic times, suffered during the sanctions era. everyone is looking for a bargain; Supplied 2 Best Value Wine Guide 2017 for some way of eking out hard- they are all available on shelf for earned rands just a little further. R80 or less. So next time you are That’s where this Getaway Best in your local supermarket or liquor Value Wines Guide is useful: it cuts store, hunting down a bargain Value [noun]: the through the clutter on the wine for this weekend’s braai, dinner shelf, with an experienced team with friends or simply that Thursday importance, worth of judges having tasted the wines night spaghetti bolognaise, go or usefulness of and rated them. One thing common armed with the information you’ll something; the to the almost 250 wines assessed find in this booklet – or look for across a variety of classes is that bottles with Best Value stickers on. worth of something compared to the price paid or asked for it’ – OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY 3 What Best Value means The firstBest Value Wines Guide was published in 2002 – and the upper price threshold for wines submitted was just R30. Fourteen years on, the startling thing is that there are still wines retailing for that amount! The upper limit for consideration as a Value contender this year was R80. Now, as then, there is some difficulty in stacking wines of similar quality with significantly different prices up against each other – which is where the statistical boffins add their fiendishly clever mathematical formulae to level the playing field. In the early years, the value rating was a rather simplistic application of the star rating of a wine and the price of an individual bottle versus the price ceiling – and then factoring in the grape variety used. Some years ago, however, statistician and wine enthusiast Dr David Priilaid of the University of Cape Town’s School of Management Studies developed an algorithm, explaining: ‘The adage of a fool knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing also applies to wine – a bottle’s value is a very different number relevant to its actual price. Tempting though it is to shop on price, with wine this strategy can prove misleading. A R50 bottle might be worth R25 or R125, depending on its quality. So instead of shopping on price, it’s a better bet to shop on value. If you know the given quality of the wine in your hand, you can calculate the value, enabling a price-to-value comparison and hence a sorting mechanism to stack wines from high-value bargains to rip-offs.’ iStockphoto.com 4 Best Value Wine Guide 2017 Best Value rating system The statistical model applied in affixing a value rating to each wine was developed by Dr Priilaid after more than a decade of analysing the results of various wine competitions and tastings, and then using the information to develop a system of correlating a given wine’s value, quality and price. For example, a 4 Star-rated blended red wine costing R60 could translate to a R90 valuation. In other words, the wine would be trading at a R30 – or 50% discount – to its value. In layman’s terms, it’s over-delivering on its price and the consumer is getting a good deal. Conversely, that same R60 bottle of wine could be valued at R45 – not a bargain because the consumer would then be overpaying by 25% relative to the value on offer. 5 iStockphoto.com 6 Best Value Wine Guide 2017 How it works The tastings The ratings All of the wines entered into the Best Value competition Once the judges had finished tasting, utilising the were tasted blind (without sight of the labels). The standard 20-point scoring system, the scores were judges sat in two separate panels of three to assess the captured by the auditors and the wines were then wines, which were tasted in specific categories: discussed individually, with a star rating applied Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, white to each wine once consensus had been reached blends, Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz, Pinotage, Merlot, (see below). red blends, rosé, dessert wines and bubblies. The auditors then applied the algorithm developed All were poured at their optimal serving temperature, by Dr Priilaid to determine each wine’s individual depending on the class or style of wine, from driest value (V) score, based on its price, star rating and to sweetest. Furthermore, the judges all started at wine category, with V20 being the highest rating that different points in the line-up and tasted the wines in a wine could potentially achieve. a different order, so as to negate the ‘halo effect’ (which Wines that ended up with a value rating of zero is when the taste of one wine influences our perception or below have been omitted from this Best Value of the next one). Wines guide as they are not deemed to over-deliver The tastings were conducted over two days at the on price or to represent a particularly good deal Getaway offices at RamsayMedia in Cape Town. All for customers. procedures were overseen and supervised by auditors Grant Thornton, who subsequently applied the algorithm to derive the value ratings. Awarding stars 5 Stars: superlative, top class, a masterpiece (18 points or more) 4½ or 4 Stars: excellent, a wine of distinction (17 and 16 points respectively) 3 or 3½ Stars: good to very good, displaying fine character and style (15 and 15.5 points respectively) 2 or 2½ Stars: sound quality, average and appealing (14 and 14.5 points respectively) 1 Star: an acceptable if somewhat ordinary wine (13 points) 7 Meet the judges Dr Winnie Bowman Fiona McDonald Perpetual scholar, physiotherapist and Ntsiki Biyela A trained news journalist, ergonomics expert, Winnie Fiona was the editor of Wine obtained a PhD in didactics magazine for eight years before switching her focus to Breaking barriers is nothing before going freelance. This wine, becoming a Cape Wine new for Ntsiki, one of the has enabled her to taste