The last episode of BBC4′s “Wine” series goes behind the scenes of the International Wine Challenge (IWC) “the most comprehensive and influential blind tasting in the world”
The chairmen of the IWC, Tim Atkin, Charles Metcalfe and Derek Smedley will be tasting the wine produced by two unlikely South African winemakers at the end of their quest to produce wines worthy of an IWC accolade.
Showing on BBC4 TV on Monday 2 March 2009 at 9pm (with several repeats)
Oupa Rangaka and Mark Solms are unlikely two wine producers. Six years ago, Oupa, a retired philosophy professor, didn’t even drink wine, let alone make it. Today he and his family, including three-year-old grandson Kwena, are the only black people to own a vineyard in South Africa. Its survival depends on their ongoing relationship with Marks and Spencer and convincing the judges at London’s International Wine Challenge that their pinotage passes muster.
Mark is a world-renowned neuroscientist who inherited the family business, and is struggling to reconcile his idealistic plans for the farm with the practical realities of post-apartheid South Africa. He worries that the harvest festival he is organising may degenerate into an orgy of violence and drunkenness
Via the struggles of these two remarkable men, wine becomes a prism through which to view the current state of the Rainbow Nation.
for more info see BBC4 TV and www.internationalwinechallenge.com/
For more about the wines see www.mhudi.com and www.solms-delta.co.za/
