Good wine and good food go hand in hand, especially for Stellenzicht’s winemaker, Guy Webber. For the past few years the farm has held the Great Plum Pudding race every December whereby his entire vineyard team try and eat a 3kg plum pudding between them before Guy finishes a bottle of Stellenzicht Plum Pudding Syrah. The loser or losers have to do 24hour punch-downs for the entire harvest and so far, Guy is unbeaten. “In 2001 it was actually a dead heat and we had to have a tie-breaker with a bottle of Semillon and a 72cm diameter milk tart” says Guy. “But apart from that blip, I always win easily every year.”
What would Christmas be without a nativity play? The stable, the star, the manger and, of course, all the animals traditionally in attendance at the birth of Jesus. With this in mind, every year Rijk Melck of Muratie dresses up his numerous dogs as sheep and loans them out to the nearby primary school for their annual production. “At first the dogs weren’t too keen as they were worried people might think they were actually wolves” explains Rijk “but now they find the costumes very comfortable and in fact they often ask to wear them at other times of year as well, just for the hell of it.”
I always love a good Christmas carol and it seems I’m not alone in this. Every year, halfway through December, all the KWV winemakers and distillers dress up in white smocks, haloes and wings and hold a clean-up operation in their brandy cask cellars. “It’s really to make sure the angels’ share doesn’t build up too much over the years” says cellarmaster Johann Fourie. “But we do have to be careful that maintaining our hygienic standards doesn’t upset the brandy gods which is why we dress up.” Head distiller Pieter de Bod adds “We sing ‘Hark the Perold Angels Sing’ as we’re doing it and I think that really helps to appease them as well.”
Graham Beck Wines are renowned for their Christmas parties which sometimes stretch over several days – and even longer. “We have this game of ‘Count the Bubbles in a glass of Blanc de Blancs’” says cellarmaster Erika Obermeyer “and sometimes the parties could last until January the following year. And then we realised that Pieter Ferreira had been secretly topping the glasses up when we weren’t looking and we’d all been losing count and having to start again. Now he has to wear an elf costume and sit in the corner until the game is over as otherwise, to be frank, we’d never get the harvest done at all.”
Probably South African wine’s most famous beard-wearer is Dave Hughes, but did you know that his beard is actually detachable and at this time of year, you can borrow it for Christmas parties? Well you can and the beard is in high demand with winemakers and other wine folk using it to dress up as Santa Claus. One regular user is Ian Manley from wine-centric PR company, Manley Communications. “I wear it with my purple velvet dinner jacket which I think brings a bit of an exclusive twist to the traditional Christmas” explains Ian. “And then I hand out lots of Christmas gifts like luxury stays at 5 star hotels and resorts around Africa to my favourite wine journalists of the year.” Here’s hoping…….