THE FUSE

Apparently Henry Ford didn’t quite say that “history is bunk” – he blinked, and included “more or less”. He added that he was talking about tradition, which, he said, we don’t want: “We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” Hmmm. A notable thing about many of those who have made Cape wine history this century is that remembering tradition and creatively absorbing it has been central to their project. I asked Eben Sadie just recently if he’d read the books that Desiderius Pongràcz wrote while working as a Cape viticulturist more than half a century back. He responded with an “of course”, and put the matter neatly: “If a viticulturist did not read Practical Viticulture, it would be like trying to go somewhere with no understanding of where you should have departed from.”