The winners were announced in the inaugural Financial Mail Wine Business awards last night in Johannesburg. The Wine Company of the Year went to Kleine Zalze – YahHoo!. And Stormhoek won the Best Low Budget Campaign. We did it! Yeah!

Our good friend Bruce Jack cracked the nod of the judges in winning the Wine Personality of the Year. Good on you Bruce.

We are very proud of this award. Although there are so many wine competitions for – wine, that it is great to be acknowledged for your business approach as well.

I wish the Wine Business Awards great success in the future. This was a great event.

Today marked the start of the Dirty Hands wine marketing course at UCT’s Graduate School of Business at the Waterfront in Cape Town. This is probably the first time ever that such a course has been given anywhere. The turnout is good and I am hoping that this course will set a high standard for things to come.

The course so far has covered a brief discussion around what makes a good wine, the brand itself and the most fun of all was getting down and dirty with a bucket of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes to make our own wine. Here are some of the pictures of us inoculating (with yeast) and treating (oak woodchips) our wine.

The bucket of Cab Sauv

Margaret getting down and dirty

Our yeast beginning to froth

Nikki (dirty hands) waiting for something to happen – nice apron

Come and join us next time.

Things have been hectic around here. We just bottled the new vintages and are running the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (GSB) Dirty-Hands wine marketing course next week. I have been trying to organise well overdue "Own-a-vine. Save-a-job" certificates for our very patient contributors and trying to keep down my other day job. But there are no excuses. Life goes on and even with our limited resources and distractions from last year’s events we are pushing forward in an attempt to restore the brand to it’s pre-Orbital failure levels. Tough job.

There has been a fantastic reception to the new Pinot Grigio 2008. Go get some. The Pinotage 2007 is looking to be a real winner – like it’s granny in 2005.

Who says that winter in the wine industry is time to sit back and relax. Full steam ahead matey’s.

Yesterday whilst reading the Times I came across another one of those "Red wine is good for you" story’s so thought I would share it with you:

"A chemical derived from red wine might one day help to keep the heart genetically young, researchers have claimed.

University of Wisconsin Madison researchers had found that resveratrol appeared to halt age-related changes in the function of heart genes.

But one of the experts said drinking wine would not have have any effect. A person would have to drink many litres of wine to benefit from resveratrol"

So there you have it, drinking wine may be good for your heart, but this time rather than in moderation only a few cases a day will do the trick

Have a great weekend and just to let you know our new 2007 Pinotage is being rolled out so keep a look out for it, we think its one of our best wines yet.

(Think you will find it first in SA in Checkers and Pick n Pay stores)

A part of Stormhoek is only visited by eagles and low-slung, quick-moving hunters and their prey that try to stay unseen. 

This is a single hill, very steep and to date, inaccessible, that is covered with invasive alien trees and other plants. The seeds of most of these plants were wind-blown on to this hill over the last 50 years from plantations (pines) and infested land (wattles and gums) resulting from human intervention to the south east of Stormhoek.

Stormhoek hangs like a carpet draped over the steep foothills of the Limietberg range of mountains,  down into the narrow valley of the Kromme River, and then steeply up the foothill of the Groenberg (green mountain).

Our part of the Groenberg hill has slopes from 65 deg. elevation near the base to 30 deg. at the top. It is hard work even for a goat. There has never been any cultivation here. In fact our earliest ancestors with stone axe and spear, would have also avoided the place.

Today, this hill (70 metres high) is infested with pine, gum and wattle trees (pine imported from Europe, the other two from Australia). Very little of the plant life that originally covered these hazardous slopes is still in place, even though no human with saw or plough has ever held domination. The land is east-facing to south east- and south-facing. The view you see is mostly facing south-east. There has never been any road access.

Our neighbour, Dan Retief, is building a bridge over the Kromme River. This is the construction site. The bridge (and road) will allow access to  the high places on his farm, and ours, on the Groenberg.  There is a coffer dam on the right (out of pic) and the river has been diverted while the base of the bridge (and the pipes) are being installed.

With access over Dan’s bridge, we will be able to get to our hill and remove the alien vegetation. Then we will  secure the steep slopes against erosion and replant the native fynbos, the original vegetation.