Winemaking always seems and feels alchemical. Metaphorically speaking, promoting the haze of mystery in the cellar - the winemaker up to his/her tricks - adds appeal. But perhaps, even in practise, there may be reason for the enshrined secrecy. I mean: whenever do you hear winemakers talk openly about the laboratory nitty-gritty which is part of the rather technical process of making the stuff in the winery?

Without turning too cynical an ear to the present huffing and hoopla about the sanctioned GM experiment in the Stellenbosch vineyard (gosh, don’t those letters suggest a convenient bogeyman?), it seems to me that there are other manipulations which we know and don’t know about, comes the time to turn earthy grape juice into godly wine.

One needs only to wander into the regular lively debates about organic production (a recent hefty debate about organic wine production livened up Die Burger’s weekly supplement By last week or so) with a slightly finer tuned ear to realise it isn’t all straightforward where the allowable add-ins and add-tos cross the line into the winery.

An advertisement in the present month’s Winelands magazine, punting ‘innovative oak tannins’ by a well-known local supplier, again triggered this suspicion. (As well as my enduring amazement, after the recent Absa Top Ten Pinotage competition, that some people, including esteemed judges, would prefer their pinotage to taste like coffee. Clearly, natural pinotage juice has to be manipulated in some way or another to do so.)

The new advertised line of ‘tannin blends specifically formulated for use at different stages of winemaking’, is ‘created, using oak directly sourced from the same premium forest regions as fine French oak barrels’. It is illustrated by an elegant photograph of three small heaps of brownish powder. We are assured that it is 100% natural in the advertisement, but somehow I can’t shake the feeling that those stacks of tannin blends (‘the product of cutting edge research into one of the most complex areas of chemistry’) looks, if not ominous (which I’m sure it is not - it may even be good), at least a little like the kind of ingredients an alchemist might be playing with.

And that powder, I understand, is but one of the ingredients that make their way, bagsful, as sorcerer’s additions into winemaking sanctuaries.