Bridgid Hamilton Russell gave the book she wrote about her father, the late Tim Hamilton Russell, the title Red Tape for a reason. The biggest challenge Hamilton Russell faced in creating his eponymous property almost 50 years ago was the regulatory swamp stifling innovation in the wine industry. You would need to be in your fifties or sixties to remember the bureaucracy of South Africa’s ancien régime: when you could apply for a document or seek permission and expect an (almost) immediate response, motivated by a well-informed (if somewhat misguided) reason for the decision.I mention “misguided” because slavish adherence to the regulations was a feature of the era. It was with some relief that we watched KWV sail into its self-imposed sunset at the end of the 20th century. Somehow, with the demise of the institution most invested in an almost Aryan obsession with detail and documentation, it seemed fair to assume that the curtain had come down on bureaucratic stupidity.How wrong we were. Old bureaucrats never die; they simply reincarnate. Those who flourish in the over-regulated and under-policed realm of wine and alcohol have survived largely undisturbed by successive ANC governments. This may have been because it was immediately clear that ownership of vineyards was more an enterprise of love than profit. Compared with resource extraction, for example, there was little margin for wholesale pillage, so wine was left well alone. In the meantime, born-again fonctionnaires arrived on the scene imbued with a tax collector’s enthusiasm for hair-splitting and nit-picking.The first signs of the return of the wine führers emerged last year with the publication of regulations around “class designations” on liquor labels. Henceforth — so the gazetted rules made clear — bottles of dry red wine would need the words “dry red wine” printed on the front (main) label in letters 4mm or bigger. The idea, as it was explained to me, was that this would prevent purveyors of fake wine from selling “ales” (ie sugar fermented water with colourant and flavourant) as wine.Think about this for a moment: people who are busy producing counterfeit wine for a market that knows that it’s buying a beverage so cheap it can’t possibly have been made with grapes are going to halt their enterprise immediately because they are now under a legal obligation to label it “dry red wine”. They’ve faked everything else — but they are going to draw the line on putting a dishonest description on the label? It’s like believing that the best way to stop the trade in illicit tobacco products would be to mandate a printed stamp saying “excise paid” on each packet. (To be fair, in the face of an appeal, the authorities have agreed to reconsider this requirement).But all this pales into insignificance with the latest directive from the Wine Certification Authority (WCA). Henceforth, producers of old vine wines who have previously labelled their products “Old Vine Chenin/Cinsault”, etc, will have to amend their labels to “Old Vines (plural) Chenin/Cinsault” to ensure consumers are not misled into believing the wine in question was the product of a single vine. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could produce enough wine from a single vine to justify the exercise. However, a “single vine” wine category has now been registered, so, according to the WCA’s legal boffins, there’s a risk of confusion. Everyone who previously used the term “Old Vine” will have to destroy their labels and start again.I wrote (several times) to the head of legal at the WCA to ask how many “Single Vine Wines” have been produced in South Africa. I also asked if an officer of the authority is present at the harvest to ensure that no stray grapes from another vine land up in the fermentation vat. I’ve had no reply. I’d like to believe that someone in the labyrinthine recesses of the red tape cauldron is ruminating. The more likely explanation is that they are permanently out to lunch.