The Latest Pour

Bottled in every wine, is a lost summer, hopes and dreams of human endeavour and, of course, the story of the very soil itself. How could I not want to write about that? It's with great pleasure that we introduce Malu Lambert! Wine and writing are Malu Lambert’s passions combined. An award-winning wine writer, Malu won the title of the Mont Blanc Emerging Wine Writer of the Year at the Louis Roederer International Wine Writers’ Awards 2019 – only the second South African to ever bring home a Roederer. She also won the Veritas Young Wine Writer in 2015. She fell in love with wine while working as a waiter in London to pay for her studies. Back home while studying journalism, she picked up the phone and called the editor of the Wine-of-the-Month Club’s then magazine Good Taste and asked if she could write for them ... and so began her internship, which turned into a permanent position after she graduated top of her class.  After working for Wine-of-the-Month and Good Taste for a number of years, she went on to freelance for numerous titles; including the position of wine editor for Food & Home Entertaining for five years. Internationally she has written for Jancis Robinson, The Buyer, Imbibe, The Japanese Times & Decanter on South African wine. Malu is currently enrolled in the WSET Diploma programme and is a graduate of the Michael Fridjhon Wine Judging Academy. She now sits on various panels and is also a taster for Platter's by Diners Club South African Wine Guide.  Her happiest place on earth? Malu lives in Noordhoek with her distiller husband James and their two boys Elliott and Wilder. They love nothing more than a Sunday spent walking on the beach, followed by a beer and a hotdog at their local craft brewery. “A dream day for me is having a view of the ocean, a plate of Saldanha oysters and a bottle of Chenin Blanc,” shared Malu. “Or, going from cobwebby cellar to cobwebby cellar tasting wines out of the barrel with one of our many gifted winemakers while listening to their stories – luckily I get to do this as my day job.”   To support her journalism habit she runs FABLE, a story-telling, social media and copywriting company. Added to that she’s always got something creative on the go, such as her food and wine pairing project, Franck & Wine, with famed chef (and Noordhoek local) Franck Dangereux visit www.malulambert.com for this as well as for her latest stories and wine reviews.

“Wine makes you see double, and act single. The doctors say: you have to choose. Wine or Memory. You can't have both!”Clive Torr comes from a wine background and loves to judge wine. But before a judge he considers himself a winemaker, first and foremost. Then a wine educator: currently, Clive is acting principle of the Cape Wine Academy. Clive also loves to promote South African wine; he achieves this via his role as marketing manager of SFW and pr of Nederburg.Clive has been active in wine judging circles for the last 26 years, both locally and overseas, and has been on the Wine-of-the-Month Club panel since 2006.Clive has his Cape Wine Master Certificate of Wine Judging, passing the final exam of which, he says, has to be his most memorable moment in wine judging. His qualifications have opened many doors for him, allowing him to sit on a variety of judging panels, including those of Wine magazine, John Platter Wine Guide, Veritas, Terroir, Diners Club, Readers Digest, Conferie du Chevalier du Tastevin, and Winemakers Choice. Internationally, Clive has judges for the Royal Hobart International Wine Show in Australia.A healthy body promotes a healthy mind, says Clive, and his love for the great outdoors extends to running marathons, cycling, golf and windsurfing. To unwind he loves nothing more than getting behind his trusty binoculars for a bit of bird watching and, finally, and to stimulate the senses, he blows a toot as a member of a brass band.

“I moonlight as a winemaker, or maybe I am a winemaker moonlighting as a wine writer.”Irina is not sure which of the above applies to her. Either way, she knows a thing or four about wine.Irina became a Cape Wine Master in 1989. She has judged for Veritas, the SA National Young Wine Show, Diners Club, Wine magazine, SAA, the Good Food & Wine SWISS International Airlines competition and, internationally, at the Rendez-vous du Chenin in France.Irina has written on wine for the Sunday Times, Cosmopolitan, Diners Club, Womans Value, African Panorama and The Other Guide to the Cape, as well as having articles published in Wynboer, Wine magazine, etc. She also founded and edited the official publication of the Institute of Cape Wine Masters, Master Copy.Currently, Irina is a wine writer for Wine-of-the-Month Club and does regular articles for Good Taste. She has a special interest in wine and food pairing—“It really is something of an art,” she says. Most wine, she says, is consumed with food and not for judging purposes.Irina regularly travels to overseas wine areas, most recently to the sherry areas of Spain—Jerez and Sanlucar de Barrameida.Irina’s passion for wine runs much deeper than that of a judge and a scribe. She is a wine producer with a special interest in Chenin Blanc—and in saving some of South Africa’s very old and valuable vineyards of this variety.

“A serious business that is also a lot of fun too” Winnie Bowman is a Cape Wine Master and has been judging wine since 2005. An academician through and through, Winnie started as a physiotherapist, then developed an interest in occupational health, completed a Masters in Biomedical Sciences at UCT and ended with a PhD in Didactics at Stellenbosch University.Winnie has brought her same enthusiasm for learning to wine. She earned an Evaluation of Port from Stellenbosch University department of Viticulture and Oenology in 2007, her Cape Wine Master Diploma from the Institute of Cape Wine Masters in 2008. Then her CWM in 2008 and then two wine judging certificates in 2009, one of them for Evaluation of Red, White and Fortified Wine from Stellenbosch University, and the other from the Wine Tasting Academy of the Graduate School of Business at UCT.Winnie has also judged wine for Veritas, the John Platter Wine Guide, CTICC Wine Selection and the Breedekloof Wine & Food Show.Winnie works as an industry occupational health consultant; teaches ergonomics part-time at Stellenbosch Medical School, as well as international wine for the hotel school programme of Varsity College.For such a busy lady, what are her memorable moments? The ones that stand out, she says, are the first time she judged for the John Platter Guide panel and every Monday evening selecting Wine-of-the-Month Club wines—“A serious business that is also a lot of fun too.”Finding time to relax is few and far between, but when she does, Winnie enjoys travelling to winemaking countries and reading, writing, experimenting in the kitchen, photography, being the social secretary and personal taxi driver for her young son—and of course learning about any new subject that pops up on her radar screen.

“There is always something new, just around the corner, waiting to be discovered” Margaret Fundira has been judging wine since 2001. Her passion for the beverage started with a degree in microbiology that specialised in winemaking. This led her to taking an active interest in judging. She has her Wine Judging Certificate from Stellenbosch and has judged on the National Young Wine Show and for the VERITAS awards, as well as for the Diners Club Winemaker of the Year competition and the ABSA Top 10 Pinotages. She is a technical advisor on the South African Wine Show Board. Margaret can’t highlight any outstanding moment in her wine career. “Basically, each great memory has prepared me for the next,” she says. “They are like stepping stones across a stream, with the journey being the best part; there is always something new, just around the corner, waiting to be discovered.” When not being active in the wine game, Margaret enjoys spending quality time unwinding with family and friends...

How a mental block almost prevented me from starting the Wine-of-the-Month Club  It was 1985, I remember, and I was sitting on the plane coming from East London. It had been a singularly unsuccessful trip. The client had rejected my advertising proposal. Added to that, my back was playing up. On the airport apron, I remember all the other passengers striding past me while I hobbled along like an old man. I was sitting in a window seat, easing the pressure on my back and looking at the puffy white clouds flying past, when it struck me. Why not put the wines in a ‘post’ box—if the customer had a key and we had a key then we could always deliver the wines—even if nobody was at home.  How often do you have an idea but don’t go ahead with it because of a hitch you perceive as an insurmountable problem? It’s amazing how a small snag can sometimes stop you from going ahead with a project, whether it’s building new shelves in the garage, going on an overseas holiday, or starting out on a whole new life-changing career. And yet it’s only you who sees the obstacle; and the problem is compounded by the fact that you don’t talk to anybody about it. In your mind that little stumbling block quietly goes around closing doors and pulling down shutters. That’s what it was like with me before I started the Wine-of-the-Month Club. For several years I had dreamed of running a wine club, ever since I had read a book on advertising written by one of the founders of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Surely, just as people want informed guidance on what to read, there are also those, like me, who need advice on wine? Oddly enough, the book included a whole page of ‘of-the-month’ knock-offs … Detective Book-of-the-Month Club, Flower-of-the-Month Club, and so on … but not one on wine. (At that time, Americans, even less so than South Africans, were not really into their wines.) But how do you start learning about wine if you don’t grow up in a family that always drinks and enjoys the stuff? Anyway, the problem stopping me was, okay, say you had to start the club, how do you deliver wine to people when there is no one at home? Not everyone has a maid or someone who can take delivery of a pack, and you can’t very well leave it on their doorsteps. That put the kibosh on any further thinking about the idea—until the post box ‘brainwave’ on the plane. Yes, that’s it; we’ll screw boxes into people’s gates or front doors. When they come home they’ll see the delivered pack showing through a hole in the front of the post box, and they’ll exclaim, “Oh, look, my wine has arrived.” Suddenly it all fell into place. Before we had landed I had not only made a few sketches of the ‘post box’, but I had even scribbled down a few ideas that would later become key aspects of the club. The wines had to be chosen by a panel of experts. The panel must taste blind. There should be a newsletter in the pack telling members why the wines are good and what to look for when tasting them … when to drink them … what foods to enjoy with them … even the neck-tag idea.  "The most expensive wines are not necessarily the best" Four months later I was out on the street—my partner had bought my share of the business I was in for the bargain price of R135 000—and I was scouting around for premises from which to start the club. I needed a liquor licence, of course. I found exactly what I was looking for in the old Alphen Winery in Constantia, where the owner just happened to be looking for a buyer for his quiet, out-of-the-way wine shop that was barely keeping afloat. The premises were barn-sized, though—just what I needed to pack and store wines. But there was a hitch. Aside from R65 000 for the cost of stock, the owner wanted R100 000 for the lease. The rental was only R350 a month and had 13 years to run and he put a price of R100 000 on it. But I had only R135 000 and I needed at least R40 000 for advertising and marketing and R35 000 to survive on until things got going. So the deal fell through. I went on holiday to mull over what I should do. When I came back I called on him again. “I’ll pay you the R100 000,” I said. “But only in two years’ time.” He accepted. I took over the stock and premises in January 1986 and then set about learning as much about wine in as short a time as I could. I figured around 600 members would make the operation viable. A critical factor in the club’s success, however, would be confirmation of a vague notion I had at the back of my mind that out there we should find inexpensive or moderately-priced wines that were actually better than a lot of the more expensive stuff. Apart from people learning about wine, in the long term, getting quality at moderate prices would be a reason for them to stay on as members. By April I had the answer. The panel of judges I had put together had its first tasting (at the time I naturally wasn’t a good enough taster to be a judge), and it showed the notion to be true: the most expensive wines were not necessarily the best. In June, with a half-page ad in both the Cape Times and Cape Argus, I launched the Club. We had 1 600 phone calls asking for further information and to those names, and to another 20 000 top income families in Cape Town, we mailed a special introductory offer and an invitation to join. Over 2 000 people did. In the nine years I had been in direct mail advertising, I had never achieved a response rate that matched that, for any client. The timing must have been right. It was the start of the massive growth in new producers, varieties and labels coming onto the market. The plethora of labels only helps add to the confusion and bewilderment of consumers. At the time producers numbered about 150. Today there are around 600. The early days were heady and exciting, and soon we were delivering to every part of the country. But that also entailed investment in time and energy, with not much monetary return. Plus we had competition from some quick-start imitators. It took 14 months before I could pay myself a salary, and two years before the Club actually made a profit. When I look back now, I have to say that, one way or another, everything has exceeded my expectations. For one thing, wine is such an interesting product to sell. Change is always taking place in the industry, and there is always something new coming onto the market—and the stuff just gets better and better. Even more rewarding have been my interactions with the people who make wine. Winemakers are the salt of the earth; as a batch, the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. They know what it’s like to fail, so they always have their feet firmly planted on the ground. And then there are the wine drinkers: they do go on about it, and it’s nice. Where else can you find products that can give a person so much to talk about, or provide so many good memories? Possibly the most gratifying aspect of all is that my four children are now in the business and even run it better than I ever did. You have to start a business, build it up, and have your children come into it to know what that feels like. Is there a core idea behind what makes the Club work? As long-standing member M O’Donoghue of Newlands says: “It’s like Christmas morning every time a pack arrives. Unpacking each bottle, examining the labels, putting on the neck tags ... I’m like a kid in a sweet store.” Oh, that ‘post box’ idea? I never used it. When you think about it, it was really quite stupid. Once I had put pen to paper and actually worked out how the club would operate, there seemed very little justification for it. It just goes to show how you can stop yourself from undertaking a life-changing experience simply because you’ve got a mental block about a matter that, in the vast scheme of things, is actually quite insignificant. It’s funny the way we’re built, isn’t it?