Steve Pike

AFTER a break for 45 years, Allan Mullins went surfing yesterday. Allan was paralysed in 1971 when he and his friends got a little tipsy and fooling around near Sandy Bay, he dived head-first off some cliffs and broke his neck when he hit sand. He was 23.

Colleagues and friends in the wine industry pulled the Cape Wine Master from his wheelchair and paddled him into the waves at Muizenberg yesterday.

They had procured the use of a massive Stand Up Paddle board that must have been all of 18-feet long, and the biggest surfboard I have ever seen. In fact, organiser Duncan Savage from Cape Point Vineyards said the board was “visible from space”.

His connection to the assembled vintners was evident. As a Cape Wine Master, Allan has been called “the most influential personality in South African wine” and the man responsible behind the success of the wine selection at Woolworths, where he worked for 21 years.

He founded the Wine Society at SACS and has become famous as one of the best – if not the best – wine blenders in the country with an incredibly sharp nose and palate for the good stuff.

It was the turn of the young winemakers around him to repay his contribution to the wine industry. Big wave safety expert Ross Lindsay held a briefing before the assembled crowd, and Allan said a few words.

He spoke briefly about the challenges he had faced, mentioning that he had always missed surfing,