(Part 1 of a few, or perhaps several)

 
 
 
  (Morning Cape Town from my hotel window)

          It began with me waiting. And then with me waiting even longer. Would this first-time trip to South Africa ever begin?

          I arrived at our ABC corporate office before 4 am, where I had arranged to meet
Brad Lewis, Director of Wines for ABC and my travel buddy for the trip.

          Four am and Brad is nowhere to be found. I call him. “Are you almost here?” “Didn’t you
get the email? The South African Airways flight to New York has been seriously delayed due to a medical emergency so we don’t need to leave Orlando until 10:35.”

          Uhhh, no, somehow I missed that email. Anyway, it was a learning experience. And by
that I mean I got to know what goes on at Denny’s at 4:30 in the morning, and I learned all about aeronautical engineering from the guy who works nightshift at the gas station where I stopped for coffee.

          The sun eventually rose – (my notebook tells me that I heard the first bird singing at 6:19 am) – and Brad and I eventually made it to New York. And we only had to wait there nine hours for our next flight.

          But just when you least expect it, the unexpected always happens, and without any further delay we were finally aboard our plane for a mere fifteen hour flight to Johannesburg. Which was okay – after thirty-eight hours of not sleeping I got a solid eight hours of sleep on the plane. We landed safely in Johannesburg and quickly jumped on the next plane to Cape Town, our final destination. It was ten o’clock at night when we arrived. We were originally scheduled to land
early in the morning so we missed our entire itinerary for our first day which was supposed to include a sauvignon blanc safari and a special green tie (ecologically speaking) dinner. Instead, Cape Wine 2012 began the next morning and we were ready to go.

          To me, trade shows are both a blessing and a curse. Where else would you have the chance to taste the wines of 313 (by my count) wine producers all within the confines of one very large room? And if every producer averages ten wines available to taste, that’s well over three thousand wines to sample. Not only is that mind-boggling, but it can make the search for exactly what you want like
trying to find a needle in a haystack.

          Don’t get me wrong – I love trade shows, and I love being invited to them, but to some degree they can be a little antiseptic. They are all business and science; by which I mean the constant need to taste and evaluate wine in a near enough laboratory situation. No wonderful scenery, no delicious food, no relaxed off-duty smiling people – all the things normally associated with the enjoyment of wine.

          I must say, though, that we were made very welcome. People in the wine business, by and large, are a very friendly bunch. We stopped by to see our friends at the Graham Beck Wines booth to say hello. As anyone who reads this blog knows, the Graham Beck wines are a staple of quality wines from South Africa at our ABC stores.

(With our friends at Graham Beck Wines)

          We also ran into John Gorman from Southern Starz on our first day. Southern Starz is a great importer of southern hemisphere wines, and a good friend of all of ours at ABC. John – a Capetonian by birth though he now resides in California – was a great host, and I’ll have more to say about our adventures with him in future blogs.

          Well, we didn’t quite stop at the booths of every one of the 313 producers, and we certainly didn’t taste all 3,000+ wines available to us, but Brad and I did give it a good shot over the three days of the show. What we did find was a huge jump in the quality of South African wines and a sense of strong regional identity that was very pleasing to see.

          And there’s a lot more to tell. See you again in two weeks.

Bill
Stobbs, ABC Wine Supervisor

(Follow me on Twitter @abcwinebills)