Immodest charm of the Wines of South Africa: the Moscow exhibition
The Russian wine industry is filled with endless zeal. In the civilized world if you master the budget of unsuspecting foreigners (meaning Wines of South Africa) one would expect this should be done with a nice quality and by professionals. In fact we see just the opposite. We like to suck the blood of poor good foreigners understanding no Russian leaving little in return. The organization of the exhibition of Wines of South Africa in Moscow confirms this thesis once again.
Modesty is not what I could call one of the main features of Mr. Vladimir Gorodkov (who was in charge of this event). If the guy graduated from some “Cape wine academy”, he can fearlessly call himself a connoisseur of South African wine industry». I suspect he probably knows SA wines more than anyone else (as well as wine in general). But you might know this — the more someone beats one’s chest and declares oneself a connoisseur, the less are the chances of that to be truth.
I am holding in my hands the leaflet «The exhibition-tasting of South African wines”. We really don’t have to go far to judge about the level of the management knowledge. “Illiterate pathos” – the best words to describe the style of the publication. In particular, there are such entertaining topics as «The authenticity is guaranteed» (we’re talking about the New World!), “The whole world is in the wine lands» (what the hell is this?),»Kinds of white wine» and «Kinds of red wine». Perhaps in the Cape Academy they doesn’t teach that there are «white varieties» and «red varieties”. In the same booklet there are interesting typos, like, Petit Ferdo and the others which I hardly can reproduce in English. Wineries are affectionately called «the farms», and the text is generally written at a decent level of an uneducated trainee in the second-tier PR-agency. Bravo!
The positive point was a good selection of place for the tasting: the ventilation and the light were both fine. Nevertheless for those who came at 16.00 (two hours before the official closing) little wine was left on the tables. It is not clear why no wines of the important importers — Simple and MBG – were present. The impressions of Mr. Gorodkov’s seminars were shared with me by other people and for some reason I’m not surprised that they were not altogether positive.
It is also worth mentioning a strict «face control» by Mr Gorodkov who was carefully and not quite politely selecting people to invite to his workshops.
I hope that the «black boys» from South Africa will soon realize what a slavery they have gotten into and go fighting for liberation as once Nelson Mandela did. After all the World Cup may not be enough to rescue the situation with SA wines in Russia.
