meerlust

Wine ‘n’ Soccer

Jun 8, 2010 by Ted Botha Leave a Comment

wine Come Saturday and the match between… well, I’m not sure who it will be between… but a bunch of us in New York will be at a little bistro called the Rouge Tomate on 60th Street, watching the match and drinking wine. South African wine, of course.

There’s no better time to promote SA wine, which is going through a buzzy time at the moment anyway. People all over America are talking about Goats do Roam and Mulderbosch and Meerlust and Warwick and Boekenhoutskloof, and more and more liquor stores have a SA wine section.

A couple of weeks ago a fab group called Wines of South Africa held a tasting where there were winemakers from all over the Western Cape in attendance, in the dozens if not hundreds. It was the function to go to.

During the World Cup, Wosa will be hosting events around the city, calling it World Cup Wine Nights, mixing two passions – wine and soccer – giving Americans a chance to try figure out not only what the rules of soccer are but also why they had overlooked SA wines for so long.

Ted was born in New York and grew up in Japan, South Africa, and Washington, D.C. He has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler, and Outside. His books include Apartheid in my Rucksack, a personal account of discovering Africa as a white African; Mongo, Adventures in Trash, where he follows the people in New York City who collect what others consider garbage; and, with Jenni Baxter, The Expat Confessions, about South Africans abroad. His latest book, a nonfiction thriller about a forensic sculptor titled The Girl with the Crooked Nose, comes out in January 2012. His novel, The Animal Lover, is on Kindle. He is a swimmer and a runner, and has done his share of triathlons as well as long-distance swims in South Africa and New York’s Hudson River.