It’s that time of the year when the wine family silver gets polished and changes hands - to the pleasure of many and the amusement of some.

The Cape Town daily, Die Burger, has a monthly supplement called, well, bluntly ‘Wyn’. Most copy is supplied by what is known as ‘wine media liaisonnaires’, so it usually provides a handy update on wineries and bottles which got some sort of recognition by winning awards, etc. With crisp, PR-supplied photos, it is also a good picture album to get to know some faces in the business. The latest, just out, is a clincher.

But what makes ‘Wyn’ such a bumper pleasure this week, is the abundance of smiling faces reflected in those newly-polished silverware. Of course, it’s time for wine trophies, competitions and the like. And so those funny cups and bowls that serve no other useful purpose but to be passed on from year to year, from one competition winner to the next, are taking shine. In the process, their temporary owners get into print - in publications like ‘Wyn’.

South Africa’s wine industry, celebrating a hefty 350 years as it is, has, judging from the mentioned once-a-year pictures, quite a collection of such trophies. With our decent colonial past, the trove of silver cups et al is no surprise. Altogether, it would make quite a museum collection (and serve quite a crowd at a Bacchanalian feast, if used for pouring wine).

Having received only a humble plated version once, the size of an egg cup (for a very long run, methinks, as a schoolboy), a secret yearning always grabs my heart when that impressive, bulky General Jan Smuts silver trophy for ‘the South African Champion Wine’ comes out for its annual photograph.

The ultimate acclamation for the best wine at the annual SA Young Wine Show (this year won by the deserving crew of Badsberg - for their natural sweet white wine, chosen as the best out of 2 106 young wines), the boldly big, old-fashioned presence seems to have an air both inspirational and aspirational. It truly seems to signal to the winner: ‘Well done, mate!’. (The same feeling that the golden pitcher, known as the Curry Cup in sport circles, exudes.)

In contrast, a lot of the other silver stuff seem limping, shiny Johnnies-come lately. Quite a few look simply like amusing nonsense - check out the cutesy wood-crafted numbers.)

While the young wine shows and championships hand out these old-style silver cups with their pleasant retro look, some modern competitions have opted for a contemporary (re)design.

The Absa Top Ten Pinotages each get a hand-blown glass thingy that recalls the colonial times of the VOC. They look dangerously fragile, pinned to wooden bases. Had I been a pinotage producer, I’d make it a mission to collect enough for a dinner party setting  - Kanonkop has nearly enough. (With the new-fangled mocha wood nonsense infecting wines made from the variety, maybe a porcelain coffee cup is an alternative.)

The Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show hands out curious, shiny vessels that seem to belong in an opera with an African setting. (One winner gets a silly, giant-size Riedel wine glass - a decent fish bowl, perhaps.)

To the aesthetically-inclined, these ‘modern trophies’, with their awkward designs, seem to accentuate the romantic eccentricity and silly paradox of handing out vessels which, given format and shape, should serve some practical, container purpose, but are destined only for a display case. The point is that physical trophies are a comical relic of the past. Young winemakers, in all honesty, probably prefer a nice fat cheque for a trip overseas.