ADVENTURE, MUSIC, HISTORY, FOOD, POETRY, WINE, SOCIAL UPLIFTMENT, SURFING AND MUCH MORE.
R140 incl VAT
Cover artist: Joshua Miles. Cover art: Full Moon Agave. A reduction woodcut.
Joshua Miles was born in Ceres in the Western Cape in 1967.
After finishing at UCT, Joshua moved to Hermanus where he
He studied fine art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the
met his Scottish wife, Angela. They have been married more than
University of Cape Town where he received the Michaelis Prize
20 years and over the years they have lived and worked between
for best student in his final year.
South Africa and Scotland. They work together in the business of selling Joshua’s art and have a home with a studio in both countries.
Joshua is one of those rare artists who has managed to make a living solely from his art. He spent many years painting oils
Joshua is a prolific worker and has exhibited extensively in groups
on canvas but his passion has always been with reduction
and solo exhibitions and as a result he has work in private homes
block printmaking.
and collections, not only in his two home countries, but also internationally in America, Australia, France, Italy and Germany.
Joshua’s influences in printmaking started at a young age watching his aunt Elsa Miles, artist and art historian, doing woodcuts and later studying under Cecil Scotness at UCT. He is inspired by the play of light on the landscape which leads him to explore his local areas. He is always hunting qualities of light that evoke emotion. This is often the softer light that brings out the in-between tones and greys most would miss. This love of capturing the play of light is also found in reflections on water or objects. He is also inspired by the impressionist style of loose mark making and the Japanese tradition of printmaking.
Joshua Miles www.joshuamiles.art
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and music in its roar: I love not Man the less, but Nature more.
George Byron
Joshua Miles. Quando. Reduction woodcut 265 x 205mm.
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table of contents
06 10 18
contributors protecting the pumas Felipe Howard
the democracy of print: legacy of sa linocut art Melvyn Minnaar
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wine industry adventures chapter one rule no: 1 Bruce Jack
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breaking down barriers in east harlem
46 50 60 66
reading the detectives John Higgins
grootbos Geoffrey Dean
the crypto-feather Chris Marais
robert grendon – a forgotten voice in africa Matthew Blackman
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legacy of trees custom guitars Biénne Huisman
78 94 98 106 120
the national poetry prize background, update and 2021 winners the bling’s the thing Anthony Rose
in defence of worms Don Pinnock
art deco Tanya Farber
red-tailed tropicbird Vernon Head
Jim Clarke
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124 134 138 146
sea dogs Bobby Jordan
humility and the x factor Bruce Jack
the billion oyster project Jim Clarke
hops on city rooftops Lucy Corne
149 150 154 160
a young poet no longer Philip Myburgh
mothers of invention Alison Westwood
the ancient lure of bonfires lives on
162 166 176
fiction: the lesson MS Mlandu
west coast stoke Justin Fox
nft’s and wine: now and next Simon Pavitt
Jeremy Daniel
caribbean paradise Caspar Greef
Editor: Su Birch Design: Allendre Hine Address letters to the editor: editor@jackjournal.com Bruce Jack Wines Limited. Registered address: c/o Seles Group, 2a Charing Cross Road, London, England, WC2H 0HF
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Jack Journal’s Big Bang When I decided to leave the corporate wine world where I helped make some juggernaut-sized international brands, I knew what I wanted to do with Bruce Jack Wines – focus on the vineyards and the winecraft. However, there was a problem. Since selling our first winery, Flagstone, in 2008, the world of consumer communication, with which I had had nothing to do for over a decade, had moved on radically. I suddenly had to catch up with how consumers accessed information and interacted with wine producers. I threw myself into online marketing, social media and the quagmire of ‘influencers’. I did a few online courses that promised to explain how Google search words, website optimisation and Facebook ads worked … It was awful and depressing. I became suspicious of platforms like Twitter, etc., because by design they amplify negative tonality of the written word – and that most crucial of understanding tools, context, is ubiquitously sacrificed for immediacy, reactiveness, FOMO and clutter. I discovered to my horror that I was lost in a dense, dark jungle of overwhelming noise, my only guide a capricious gadget called a smartphone designed by organisations 4
as helpful as they are clearly nefarious. I am not the only person never to have met an algorithm I trust, be that what pops up on a social media feed or how a large supermarket supply-chain manager is notified by her screen to place another order. We have witnessed the collapse of global shipping logistics, partly because of the flawed artificial intelligence embedded in international shipping systems. Self-drive cars – originally based on clever code, false-messiah AI and greedy tech investment – have failed to deliver on their promise, the bright buttons at engineering labs now rather quietly reverting to yesterday’s camera technology. And don’t those selfservice book-in machines at airports look forlorn while travelers’ lost baggage piles up like clogging rubbish in a ghetto? We are told it will all be okay and that the computers will come back to save us from ourselves. I don’t believe this. We all know AI isn’t going to save us from climate change. Which is why, as a winemaker, someone inextricably tied into the warming seasons, and embedded in an ancient craft, I must always champion context and collaboration – the cornerstones that will save us. Jack Journal has had a very long gestation period. It all began in 1987 when a group
of friends and I started an unsanctioned magazine at school called Gray Matter. Illicitly printed on a clunky Xerox machine and stapled together, it caused a mild sensation by lampooning our equivalent of helicopter moms … an irate mother wrote a vitriolic letter to the principal demanding an apology from me, the editor. It was one of the most rewarding moments – I suddenly realised that a well-timed word had as much impact as a well-timed rugby tackle in the ribs. I framed the letter of complaint. What a triumph! Thirty years later, Gray Matter was still being produced by the students. As an undergraduate, during apartheid, while studying Politics and English, the heady journey continued with a magazine called Ascent produced and published by the Humanities Student Council. I revelled in the deadline-enforced all-nighters, and as co-editor came in for a lambasting from both political extremes at UCT (University of Cape Town) – the agitating young revolutionaries and the conservative right. It was a surreal ride, with an ironic twist – a decade later I learnt that one of those agitating revolutionaries so critical of Ascent was a spy for the apartheid police. It wasn’t all opinion pieces. We also produced a magazine dedicated purely Jack Journal Vol. 4
to creative writing, called 3rd Ear, and I was thrilled to have poetry published in South Africa’s oldest literary magazine, New Contrast. After a Masters degree in Literature and a failed attempt at publishing the ‘Great South African novel’, I started working full time in the wine industry, followed shortly by a postgraduate Oenology and Viticulture degree at The University of Adelaide. Thankfully, wine bottles have back labels, and wine businesses have newsletters to write.Various publications also asked me to contribute, so when I didn’t have my head in a tank, or wasn’t vainly trying to sell my wine, I was able to write a bit. Highlights included a regular column for The South African newspaper in the UK, an insightful gig at Personal Finance magazine
when Bruce Cameron was editor, and a few prefaces for WOSA (Wines of South Africa) publications while Su Birch was CEO (Su is now the editor-in-chief of Jack Journal). I may also be the only full-time winemaker to have written the forward for Platter’s Wine Guide. As I slowly worked out what was positive in this new, often artificial, world of marketing and communication, and, more importantly, what was not, I came to a conclusion: I had to believe in the intelligent, inquisitive and considered wine drinkers out there.
I knew you couldn’t all have been transformed by snake oil AI into mindless crowd-rating app slaves. No matter what age or nationality, I believe in my heart you are still interested in the rich, diverse context of wine and the joy of discovery. And the only way I know how to reach you, to share this journey with you, is to produce a beautiful and embracing magazine. Thank you for joining me.
Bruce
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contributors
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SU BIRCH
LUCY CORNE
Su Birch is a distinguished international marketer. As CEO of Wines of South Africa, she received the Drinks Business Woman of the Year award. She runs her own marketing business called Thinking Seahorses and is enjoying the challenge of producing the Jack Journal. She also volunteers as an English coach in a local township school.
Lucy Corne is a beer writer and the editor of On Tap, South Africa’s only beer magazine. She is Africa’s first certified cicerone – akin to a beer sommelier – and the founder of South African National Beer Day. Lucy is a big fan of pilsner and IPA but also has a deep fascination with traditional African beers.
MATTHEW BLACKMAN
JEREMY DANIEL
Matthew Blackman is a writer and historian. He has co-authored two books with Nick Dall on the history of South Africa. The most recent, Spoilt Ballots, is a history of South African elections which came out this year. He lives and works in Cape Town.
Jeremy Daniel is an author and a scriptwriter for film and television. He is the author of a series of YA nonfiction books for Jonathan Ball Publishing: the Road to Glory biographies of South African sporting heroes. His adult biography Siya Kolisi: Against All Odds ( Jonathan Ball Publishing) is a number one bestseller. He also writes business content on the convergence of cloud, mobile, big data and social media for international brands and online publications.
JIM CLARKE
GEOFFREY DEAN
Jim Clarke has been writing about wine, sake, and related subjects for almost 20 years. In 2020, Jim received the International Louis Roederer Wine Writers’ Award for Feature Writing, and in August of that year Wine Business Monthly named him a Wine Industry Leader of the Year. Jim is the author of The Wines of South Africa, published by Infinite Ideas. He is also the US Marketing Manager for Wines of South Africa (WOSA).
Geoffrey Dean is a wine and travel writer for various publications, as well as being a cricket correspondent for The Times of London, for whom he has covered more than 100 test matches. He judges for the International Wine Challenge and the Michelangelo International Wine & Spirits Awards. A lover of aged rum from his many cricketing trips to the Caribbean, and of single malt Scotch whiskies, he also writes on both spirits.
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TANYA FARBER
VERNON R.L. HEAD
Tanya Farber is an award-winning journalist and author of bestseller Blood On Her Hands: South Africa’s Most Notorious Female Killers. She has won three international human rights journalism awards, has a Masters degree in journalism from Wits University, and is passionate about science, art and social justice. She lives in Cape Town with her husband, two daughters and four dogs.
Vernon R.L. Head is a birdwatcher. He is also a South African poet with an MA in Creative Writing (UCT), a bestselling novelist, and an internationally acclaimed architect. His first book – a non-fiction narrative, The Search for the Rarest Bird in the World – was long-listed for the 2015 Sunday Times Alan Paton Literature Prize. His first novel, A Tree for the Birds, was long-listed for the Sunday Times Barry Ronge Fiction Prize and short-listed for the National Institute of Humanities & Social Sciences 2020 Fiction Prize. And his poetry has been long-listed for the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Prize in 2014, 2017, and again in 2019. He writes for a number of international literary magazines.
JUSTIN FOX Justin Fox is a travel writer, photographer and former editor of Getaway magazine. He is the author of more than 20 books, including The Marginal Safari, Whoever Fears the Sea, The Impossible Five and Beat Routes. His latest World War II novel, The Cape Raider (Penguin, 2021), is available in bookshops and on amazon.com. Its sequel, Wolf Hunt, is due out soon.
CASPAR GREEFF Caspar Greeff has been a journalist for longer than he cares to remember (not that he has much memory left after all those beers). For the last 30 months he has been a digital nomad in Latin America, working (he is currently a subeditor for Daily Maverick) and travelling in Belize, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, the Galapagos, Peru and Panama. He is the author of the psychedelic journal The Ayahuasca Diaries.
JOHN HIGGINS John Higgins was formerly Arderne Chair of Literature at UCT and is currently a Senior Research Scholar at its Centre for Higher Education Development. His most recent academic writings include ‘Getting Academic Freedom into Focus’ and ‘Montage’, and he is also the co-author (with the artist Hanien Conradie) of 40 nights/40 days from the lockdown, a book comprising 40 hand-painted postcards and texts put together in the first two months of lockdown. Every month he convenes an online meeting, through UCT’s Centre for ExtraMural Studies, of The Detectives’ Club and The Poets’ Club, with each month focusing on a particular author and text.
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ALLENDRE HINE
BOBBY JORDAN
Allendre Hine is a strategic creator and a lover of crafted design solutions, film, coffee and meaningful conversations. Ali is a graduate of the Red & Yellow School of Logic & Magic. She is the designer on Jack Journal.
Bobby Jordan is a Cape Town-based journalist with an interest in most things, not only seals. He is employed by the Sunday Times newspaper, and was once warned not to keep writing about fish. As a writer, he is happily working his way up the food chain.
FELIPE HOWARD
CHRIS MARAIS
A keen kayaker, mountain biker and SUP surfer, Felipe Howard owns his own travel company and created the award-winning Patagonia Camp, a 20-yurt hotel located on the outskirts of Torres del Paine, which received the Avonni Innovation Award in 2009. He has helped establish and contributes to the Chile Outdoors guide. He loves travelling with his family whenever he can, showing the world to his children.
Award-winning journalist and indie publisher Chris Marais has worked in the South African media landscape for decades as a newspaper reporter, feature writer and magazine editor. In the past 15 years, Chris and his partner Julienne du Toit have focused exclusively on telling the story of the Karoo. They have published six books and written more than 300 magazine features, exposing the vast and varied narrative of South Africa’s dry heartland to readers all over the world. Operating from the river town of Cradock, they own and manage the premier website of the region: www.karoospace.co.za
BIÉNNE HUISMAN
MELVYN MINNAAR
Award-winning journalist Biénne Huisman is happiest finding the world’s special bits, and writing about them. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London, and has contributed to BBC World Arts, the Sunday Times, Daily Maverick, and more.
Melvyn Minnaar has been writing about art, wine and related existential issues for various local and international publications for many years. The creativity that underpins these subjects is an enduring personal passion. He has served on a number of cultural bodies and institutions. With a history of cultural involvement, opinions about art and wine, and an appreciation for talent, he was honoured by Veritas in 2018.
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M. SOGA MLANDU
DR DON PINNOCK
M. Soga Mlandu was born in the district of Mount Frere and lives in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. M. Soga Mlandu has published many isiXhosa school books as well as English books of essays, short stories and poems. Soga edited South Africa is Part of Africa written by Kenyan author, Anthony Kambi Masha. In 2013, he was the Mellon writer-in-residence at Rhodes University and is the recipient of four South African writers’ awards.
Don Pinnock is an investigative journalist, photographer and travel writer who, realising he knew little about the natural world, set out to discover it. This took him to five continents – including Antarctica – and resulted in five books on natural history and hundreds of articles. He has degrees in criminology, political science and African history, and is a former editor of Getaway travel magazine. The Last Elephants is his 18th book. He lives in Cape Town.
PHILIP MYBURGH
ANTHONY ROSE
Philip is part of the Myburgh clan who have lived on Joostenberg Farm for generations. Two years ago he published his debut collection, Fifty-two | Twee-en-vyftig and is now working on his next collection of English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa poems, which will go by the name A young poet no longer. When not scribbling in his notebook, he works as an advocate in Cape Town.
Wine correspondent of The Independent from 1986 to 2016, Anthony contributes to Decanter magazine, The World of Fine Wine, The Real Review and The Oxford Companion to Wine, and is the panel chair for Southern Italy at the Decanter World Wine Awards. His most recent books are Sake and the Wines of Japan (Infinite Ideas, 2018) and Fizz! Champagne and Sparkling Wines of the World (Infinite Ideas, 2021), the latter of which was nominated this year for Drink Book of the Year by the Guild of Food Writers.
SIMON PAVITT
ALISON WESTWOOD
Simon Pavitt is the founder of the boutique consulting firm Capstones Co, which manages extraordinary passion projects, and has almost 25 years of experience in fast-paced, dynamic business environments under his belt, including as the Chief Marketing Officer of a Formula One team. Simon is the Chief Operating Officer of the London Technology Club, an exclusive network of over 90 private investors, VCs, family offices, and institutional partners such as UBS, Barclays, and LGT. He is publishing his first book, Capstones: The blueprint for meaning ful passion projects, later this year.
Alison has been travelling to and writing about Africa’s top destinations for more than 15 years. Her writing and photographs have appeared in various magazines and online publications, as well as a book or two. The Cape is her favourite place in Africa, at least partly because of the wine.
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Written by: Melvyn Minnaar
The word ‘print’, both as a verb and noun, has a strong association with process and procedure. It also suggests access, multiples and format. Metaphorically, it conjures up notions of communication, spreading stories, moving messages – reaching many. Indeed, the limit of that reach is only determined by how many are printed and where they land up. From newspapers to books, to posters to brochures, the physical print marks the very essence of an open society, in conversation and debate with itself. Democracy at work. Print can be many things, but in the world of art it occupies a niche. One step away from the most simple of artistic visual gestures – the drawing – it empowers the artist to reach more, extending the audience. Western art usually credits the Nuremberg artist Albrecht Durer (1471–1528) as the first print master.
Both as creator and theorist, his work and influence defined the process during the Renaissance. He worked with wood and metal – the first producing woodcut prints, the second engravings or intaglio prints. Multiple copies were made, in the first instance, by cutting out into a wooden board the part of the illustration not to be seen. The remaining surface would be inked and printed onto paper. This is known as relief printing. In the second manner, also called etching, the opposite is done: with intaglio (‘incised’), the grooves cut into a metal plate with a burin are filled with ink, the surface wiped clean, and the print produced from those inked grooves. The handsome, clever Durer, connected to many of the well-known contemporaries of the time, including Raphael and Bellini, revolutionised printing as a sophisticated medium for artists. He unlocked the power of the process. Ownership of the artwork – in other media, like a painting, singular and elitist – opened up with more than one of the same possible. The stories to tell, the visual messages to be seen were less limited and not exclusive.
This is the democracy of art that echoes all the way to the valleys and townships of South Africa, coinciding with the awakening about 60 years ago of a particular black political-artistic awareness and invention. The simplicity of the process and the print is the trick. Inexpensive in terms of media (wood – free; linoleum – handy), relatively easy in terms of hands-on manipulation, the potential was obvious to unlock. It starts as simply as teaching preschool children to cut and print patterns with potatoes and ink. It can end up as some of the most sophisticated multicoloured, multilayered imagery in a combination of methods in the process that is called relief printing. Somewhere between these is what many have called South Africa’s own art tool, the one that we have polished to exquisite power: the linocut print. This method has suited us better than any other. For many reasons. For many purposes. For it literally and figuratively brought art and expression to the people – and their freedom.
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John Muafangejo: 1943-1987. Elephant is Killing a Lion in Funny Way in 1975. Linocut on paper. 45 by 34cm. Strauss & Co.
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Artist unknown. Linocut. From the Community Arts Project Collection.
Crossroads. Sydney Hollow. Linocut. From the Community Arts Project Collection.
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Sundowners at the new Garden Lodge.
grootbos Written by: Geoffrey Dean Photography supplied by: Grootbos
I have been fortunate enough to visit South Africa umpteen times over the last 30 years, and I am often asked by friends and acquaintances about my favourite lodge or hotel. I do not even have to think about my answer, for one place stands out – Grootbos Private Nature Reserve, a magical place 30km southeast of Hermanus to which I have kept returning again and again after my first visit there 13 years ago. South Africa has a list as long as your arm of great options, so why does Grootbos lead the way in such a distinguished field? It is hard to answer in one sentence, but suffice it to say that, like a great wine, it has multiple layers to it with so much depth and complexity. There is its exterior beauty, which hits you between the eyes, and then there is its inner beauty, which gradually reveals itself over the course of a stay. So
important to the whole ethos of Grootbos is its role in supporting both the environment and the local community. Instrumental in that has been the property’s owner, Michael Lutzeyer, a man of real vision and inspiration, who lives on site with his wife, Dorothee. Lutzeyer’s embrace of social upliftment in the area goes back many years to the first decade of the millennium, when he helped set up a football academy in nearby Gansbaai. Around 120 children, aged between six and 19, from the township flock there after school to improve not just their footballing but also life skills, such as learning English. Lutzeyer’s chance meeting with a Grootbos guest, who worked for Barclays, led to the UK bank building a R2.5m sporting clubhouse after the local council freed up some unused Gansbaai scrubland. Another Grootbos guest knew the then chairman of the English Premier League, Dave Richards, who was persuaded not only to fund the installation of a synthetic football pitch but also to pay an annual subsidy of R800,000 to the newly formed Football Federation of South Africa
(FFSA). With a central aim of promoting the sport among the disadvantaged youth of the country, the FFSA set up their HQ at the Gansbaai academy. I vividly recall how my first stay at Grootbos in December 2009 coincided with a visit to the lodge and Gansbaai by the then South African vice president, Kgalema Motlanthe. He was in Cape Town for the draw, which was due to take place that evening, of the 2010 football World Cup. In the daytime, he and his entourage came out to see the children in action at the academy. ‘I heard some time ago about the fantastic effect the federation is having on the children in Gansbaai, and I wanted to see it for myself,’ Motlanthe told me at the time. ‘It is so uplifting, and I would like to give thanks to your Premiership for their tremendous support and to Michael Lutzeyer for his role. I am a big football fan and I don’t underestimate what it can do to help our youth and lift all our spirits.’ Grootbos has been attracting acclaim from many quarters, not just for its footballing connection. The 3,500-hectare 53
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Champagne and potato chips and The Seven Year Itch (1955).
the bling’s the thing Written by: Anthony Rose
The joy of celebrity culture struck me forcefully as I was checking out the evening’s TV schedules one day to observe that, at precisely the same time, the three main UK TV channels were showing Pointless Celebrities, Celebrity Antiques Road Trip and Celebrity Catchphrase. At other times, you could catch Celebrity Bake-Off, I’m a Celebrity get Me Out of Here and Celebrity Best Home Cook (confession: I have watched this one). While Pointless Celebrities sums it up rather neatly, celebrity is clearly a must-have accessory to many, and so it’s not surprising that our lives have been increasingly enriched by A, B, C and Jay-Z-listers keen to share the celebrity lifestyle with those with stars in their eyes and bubbles in their wine glass.
The association of celebrity and champagne goes back long before Kate Moss and Johnny Depp were the luxury bubble bath suspects in a tabloid news story claiming that the celebrity couple filled the Victorian bath at the Portobello Hotel in London with 36 bottles of the house champagne (hardly enough for a bath for one, let alone two). The Victorian-era stage actress, Sarah Bernhardt, got there first as she reputedly liked to have an occasional bath in Perrier-Jouët’s Belle Epoque Champagne. Marilyn Monroe, too, is reported to have taken a bath in 350 bottles worth of champagne. The message is clear: when you’re a celebrity, you don’t just get to drink champagne, you get to completely redefine the bubble bath. The celebrity wine bandwagon has recently accelerated with indecent speed. No sooner had the news of a Kiwi Sauvignon Blanc launched by Sarah Jessica Parker been announced, than rosés from Kylie Minogue, and, to top it all, Cameron Diaz’ ‘clean rosé’ followed the Sex in the City star breathlessly. Then, just when you thought it was safe to emerge from behind the debris of recycled bottles, a press release arrived for the launch of Brad Pitt’s Fleur de Miraval Rosé Champagne. ‘Enough already,’ joked
someone on Twitter, but it was clearly not enough because along came yet another deathless press release singing the praises of Cara and her sisters Chloe and Poppy Delevingne’s prosecco, selling for a pricey £25 a pop. Not to be outdone, back came Kylie with a cava. Have I tasted it? I should be so lucky. Celebrity fizz fits the narrative long embraced by the big brands that their sparkling wine is a luxury product, and the image is burnished further by association with the glamorous persona of the celebrity. In some spurious alchemical transformation, we are led to believe that this very extravagance not only sprinkles a little stardust on our own tawdry lives, but somehow transforms fizz into a wine of luxury status irrespective of its intrinsic quality. Even before Brad Pitt conceived his champagne, The Who’s lead singer brought out a Champagne Roger Daltrey to commemorate the band’s 50th anniversary, and Santana teamed up with Mumm to create Santana DVX, a fizz made by Mumm Napa Valley, accompanied by some distinctly dubious lyrics. In the case of Jay-Z, you have to hand it to the celebrity rapper. The full story of how 95
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sea dogs ‘When I enter the ocean I am escaping the human world where I am alone and where I am not at the top of the food chain. It’s a place where wild elements are involved and where I’m not in control of everything. You are also entering a silent world where creatures treat you differently.’ Steve Benjamin, Animal Ocean Seal Snorkeling Experience Written by: Bobby Jordan Photography: Steve Benjamin
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