Wine for Mr. Gay World

Last year’s Fifa soccer World Cup was a bit of a fizzer in Cape Town as the Western Cape attracted less than half the number of visitors as Gauteng. Even worse was the poor performance of SA wine exports to the UK, largest export market, with sales to supermarkets down 11% by volume and 6% by value over the year.

This in a market which grew volumes by 2% and value by 7% as the UK clawed itself out of recession. How ironic then that Australia, a country sans World Cup, grew volumes by 5% and value by 7% from a much higher base with a currency that appreciated against Sterling even more than the Rand.

While Cape Town in winter is hardly an ideal soccer destination, it is one of the Gay Capitals of the world. So the news that SA is to bid for the Mr Gay World 2012 competition comes as welcome news to hard-pressed SA producers.

As the Guardian reported in December “The current Mr Gay World is South African Charl van den Berg. Coenie Kukkuk, a Pretoria lawyer who is the director of South Africa’s bid to host Mr Gay World 2012, said: ‘The event is not a modeling competition. Charl is a gay role model who gives courage to gays all over Africa and shows them their lives are about more than repression, torture, HIV and prison sentences.’ ”

Backsberg were one of the first producers to target pink drinkers with a Camp Chardonnay and Camp Chardonnay, now discontinued, as they used the wrong varietals. As the late, gay, Manhattan philosopher Susan Sontag pointed out, “the essence of camp is the love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration”, which makes Viognier a shoo-in for pink white. For red, it would have to be Pinotage, which is Pinot Noir in drag, full of aggressive tannins which are the oral equivalent of a five o’clock shadow and Maori tattoo.

In the red blend department, sensitive sippers need look no further than the Satyricon 2009 from La Vierge in the upper Hemel & Aarde Valley. A blend of three Italian grapes Barbera, Sangiovese and Nebbiolo, it is a liquid version of the eternal love triangle: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston or in this case three louche Latin lotharios: Encolpius, Giton and Ascyltus from the raunchy Roman novel of Gaius Petronius Arbiter, one of the courtiers of that great fiddler Nero, two millennia ago. A fashion consultant to the emperor, Pliny the Elder called Petronius “a judge of elegance” and this Gavin Rajah of his day certainly got it right with this wine.

Crimson red like Julian Clary’s blusher, the nose is all lifted aromatics of crushed hedgerow berries above a palate of intense pastille fruit, the kind Rowntree’s used to make in those heady, far off days when Woolies sold Scotch eggs and indulgently gelatinous pork pies. Mini role models for the roast pigs stuffed with sausage from the Satyricon original. Oh, how one misses a decent deep fried lark’s tongue!