Ross and Sally
Monday, March 29th, 2010
There’s a somewhat sombre mood about. The nights are getting longer, the days a little bit cooler, leaves are falling and the vines stand stripped of their fruit. The sadness is not related to the changing of the summer season to autumn but rather to the passing of two of the characters of the South African wine industry in the same week.
Ross Gower was the rock on which Klein Constantia was built. The winemaking experience he gleaned in Germany, New Zealand and at wineries such as Nederburg stood him in good stead when he was approached by Dougie Jooste to take charge of the new Constantia winery in the 80s. People will automatically associate him with Vin de Constance, that ambrosial homage to the historic Constantia wines. I prefer to remember the unbelievably good, gently botrytised, 1987 Blanc de Blanc and 1986 Sauvignon Blanc, the latter drunk 20 years after its making and dispelling all myths about the lack of longevity of South African white wines. And also for Klein Constantia’s Brut Triple zero, a bubbly made for the millennium.
There was a wonderful vitality and zest for life in Ross. Together with his family he tackled establishing Ross Gower wines in Elgin with trademark good humour – especially when he nearly blew the roof off his winery (at a point when it had no walls…) after a mishap with his press! He was renowned for his party tricks of handstands and gymnastic flic-flacs but sadly, cancer took its toll and there were precious few of those of late.
The other great character of the local fraternity was Sally Simpson – Simmo. Her life was nothing if not eventful! For years she was the PR face of Distillers Corporation’s wine estates and was loved and respected by the winemakers she travelled the country with. Stuff happened to Simmo that defied belief or even rational explanation. Like phoning Las Vegas to tell her husband Ralph Boffard that he was now father to a bouncing baby boy – and having legendary crooner and Rat Pack member Dean Martin take the call because Ralph was on a hot streak at the tables! Or meeting Louis Armstrong playing his trumpet on a pier in Cannes at three in the morning – and just chatting away because she didn’t recognise him. That meeting translated into tickets to his show and visits to him in New York… Then there was the time her cat ate business supremo Dr Anton Rupert’s dinner – or the legendary hot tub parties, her totally inability to cook but writing a recipe book nonetheless, being fired at sixty-something, her wicked way with a gin & tonic and so much more.
Both Ross and Sally will be missed and mourned but many a glass raised in celebration and memory. The stories are legion and the gap they’ll leave significant.