No, I’m not being rude, the baboons really are stealing – not that this is anything new. Tourist offices around the world often issue warnings to visitors about the aggressive behaviour of these primates. They advise people not to stand around with food in their hands or leave the car with open boot (trunk), windows or doors. They also tell you that baboons will steal food and bags from inside the car, and of course, that you should take extra care when planning a picnic – these animals will simply run up to you and grab your food! The more you feed them, the more bold and aggressive they become.

Unfortunately the problem has now spread to wine country – Chachma Baboons in South Africa’s Western Cape wine region have recently developed a taste for Chardonnay grapes and are terrorising farmers, munching their way through tonnes of grapes that are ready for harvesting. Farms in the Franschhoek Valley have been devastated by rampaging baboons, who sneak into secured plots and help themselves to top grade grapes. In some cases up to 40 percent of the harvest has been lost!

I have read that there are apparently only 360 baboons remaining on the Cape Peninsula. They have been there for hundreds, if not thousands of years but are now threatened due to conflict with humans. It goes without saying that the conservationists are keen to protect the last baboons on the tip of Africa, but at what cost to the wine producers?

Similar to my Coho Salmon story of only a few weeks ago – yet another conflict between man and beast……

First of all I would like to wish all our Irish readers (assuming that there are a few) a very Happy St Patrick’s Day. Of course, with a surname like McCarthy I should be celebrating myself, but I have to admit that my Irish roots go back very many generations, probably originating in or around Cork, where every second person shares that name.

A sentiment somewhat lost in translation

The scourge of many a European country these days is that of teenage binge drinking, or “le binge drinking” as the French call it. In Spain it is known as the “Botellon”, and those of you who follow my blog will know that I have written about this many times in the past.

The reason that I have resurrected the tale of this troubling phenomenon is largely because of a story that I read about a new French initiative….. education. No, not teaching the kids how to drink more, but an attempt to teach them a little more about wine, and wine appreciation. A government report is recommending that university canteens hold wine-tasting sessions to educate the young in the virtues of moderate consumption!

With typical Gallic flair and imagination a well-known French gastronaut explained in a radio interview, “Why is there sexual education and not viticultural education? You can learn wine too. Drinking is not drinking a bottle. Wine is pleasure. It’s like love. It’s the same.”

OK, we all know that the French are a very passionate lot, but perhaps this type of reasoning could be stretching the point just a little too far…… It’s like love???

A former director of the Sorbonne added “In order to avoid the total freak-out that happens every Friday night and Saturday night … we want to try to teach students a sense of responsibility, to allow them to taste wine in very moderate quantities, and to show them that it is both a pleasure, good for their health … and a part of their national heritage.”

Unfortunately not everyone is in agreement with the idea of serving wine to students in their lunch break, saying that it is simply naive to think that this approach will reduce binge drinking, and adding that it is more likely to serve as a form of marketing for the wine industry.

On final, rather sobering, statistic is that, according to the Paris authorities, a fifth of 17-year-olds now drink at least five glasses of wine in a single sitting at least three times a month.

By way of an update to my recent post about Pinot Noirgate, it has just been announced that US wine drinkers have filed a class action lawsuit against the French producers and American importer of the millions of bottles of fake pinot!

Stupid question? Hmm, well, you might not believe the answer, depending on which brand you have been buying! For example, in the case of Red Bicyclette your pinot noir has, until now, been made of a blend of pinot, syrah and merlot! Produced for the wine giant E&J; Gallo in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of southern France, the authorities became suspicious when they discovered that the volume of pinot noir being sold to Gallo actually exceeded the total production for the region.

The actual numbers were fairly spectacular – Between 2006-08, Sieur d’Arques apparently sold 135,000 hectolitres of the vin de Pays d’Oc labelled pinot noir to E&J; Gallo at a value of 4 million Euros. Yet the total actual Pinot Noir production from the winemakers supplying the distributors was just 15,000 hectolitres a year, so even if the region’s entire Pinot Noir acreage was devoted to making Red Bicyclette for E & J in the States, it would still be impossible.

To make matters worse, this was the defence offered in the ensuing court case: The pinot ‘manufacturers’ claimed that “Pinot Noir could be considered as a brand, expressing a taste and given qualities and not a particular variety”! Imagine the possible consequences if this wisdom was to be widely adopted…… Chateau Cheval Blanc made from a blend of cinsault and gamay, Batard Montrachet from reichensteiner and muscadelle? The entire wine world would be turned on it’s head.

The other defence argument was that “personne n’a été trompé, puisque tous savaient.” No one was conned, they say, because everybody along the chain knew about it, and nobody was harmed – except of course the poor end consumer who was paying for his pinot noir in good faith.

Apart from being totally unscrupulous and beyond belief, it does actually raise some fairly serious questions about the origins of wine, and it’s authenticity. Even in our own region rumours abound as cheap wines appear on shop shelves despite the rising price of grapes, but of course this might be just petty jealousy or hearsay – you just never know.

The only thing that I can guarantee our own customers is that every bottle that leaves our cellar is 100% Albariño (our regulations dictate that it has to be 100% to mention the Albariño variety on the label). I therefore challenge anyone to carry out whatever tests, or tastings that they wish to prove otherwise.