IT still surprises me, although it shouldn’t by now, to see South African wines openly offered on American wine lists and displayed on the shelves of American liquor stores. My one visit to South Africa, ten years ago, was during the boycott period, and there was no hope of finding here any of the wines you had enjoyed there, unless you could hook up with an expatriate who knew the ropes and who was importing for his “personal” use.
Of course that was not the case in Europe, where the particular form of posturing that fueled the boycott never caught on. Knowing how snooty the French can be about their own products, but especially their wine, I was astonished to be told that they imported lots of South African May wine. The kick: because South Africa is in the Southern Hemisphere, its May wine is produced in November. The French, being French, wouldn’t drink it if they didn’t truly like it; but the cachet of drinking May wine in a grey drizzly Paris autumn is admittedly part of the point.
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