Bruce Jack Wines Releases a New Range Called ‘Awaken the Arcade’

Awaken the Arcade wine range by Bruce Jack Wines

There are many ways to unpack the transformative, opposing extreme energies that characterise the 1980s. Bruce Jack Wines’ ‘Awaken the Arcade’ range is a nostalgic attempt at bottling the duality of that historic era.

In the movie ‘Wall Street’, Gordon Gekko declares “Greed is good,” and Dire Straits releases ‘Money for Nothing’, the music video introducing one of the first computer-animated characters, while almost simultaneously on television (TV), the horrific images of African famine ignite a mass outpouring of generosity and care through the first Live Aid Concert. A decade of foreboding and hope all whizzed up in a cultural ‘Smoothie’ (the term trademarked in the mid-80s).

The so-called ‘decade of decadence’ saw AIDS claim millions of lives, while the population simultaneously exploded. A global depression brought the poorest countries to their knees, while benefiting strong manufacturing centres like West Germany and Japan.

Explosions at Chernobyl trigger a nuclear plant meltdown, and public reaction to this disaster eventually leads to many Western European countries turning their back on this form of power, switching to gas and inexorably leading to the Ukraine invasion by Russia. Is it just ironic that Chernobyl is in Ukraine?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu won the Nobel Prize for Peace at the same time Microsoft launched Windows – the openness and group liberation Tutu extolled, while simultaneously, Big Brother found his partner in crime against humanity – Big Data, allowing creeping surveillance and the erosion of personal liberties. Is it a coincidence that George Orwell named his dystopian future vision ‘1984’?

Everything seemed to be rushing to a cliff edge as the decade convulsed and unfolded. 1989 saw the worst oil spill in history and the birth of the internet – both signalling the beginning of the end of our environment, physical, psychological and imagined. Pro-liberation protests were brutally crushed in China’s Tiananmen Square, while a few months later the fall of the Berlin Wall felt like a deep breath of freedom.

In South Africa, unprecedented social metamorphosis saw the pain and struggle of many contribute to the fall of Apartheid and the release of Mandela. Culturally, and against Apartheid’s brutal social engineering, music, the arts and sport built hope and cohesiveness in a dark time.

MTV launched in 1981 and the omnipresent platform of TV allowed artists to demonstrate the powerful future of inclusiveness. The likes of Johnny Clegg, Mango Groove and Paul Simon’s Graceland album were celebrated globally. With Doc Craven’s contrarian vision of rugby, a future black World Cup-winning captain was conjured from the future when mixed-race schoolboy rugby was shown on TV, watched by Dougie Dyers, a man of colour, and one of the Springboks selectors.

But as it often is, it is in the fertile swamp of our shared human sub-culture that the future was most clearly felt. The creative explosion of video arcade and home PC games reflected the cataclysmic schism of the 1980s – the decade we unlocked the future.

The decade when technology collided with innocence.

This wine range is about many things. But these two underpin it all:

This is a candid attempt to bottle the nostalgia of the light and hope that sparked like fireflies against the convulsing darkness of the 1980s. A range to remind us there are good people and there is positive, creative energy to light the darkness. Change is driven by communities. Wines made like these are made for a community. Wines where ancient technology mingles with innocence.
Like the game creators of the 80s, we craft our wines for a community of wine consumers who want authenticity and something rare, but something lasting. These wines are made in tiny amounts – usually about 200 cases only, and made using ancient techniques with new technology. The insight of science will never be allowed to smother the poetry.

Drink Like It’s the 80s

Awaken the Arcade will be available nationwide via brucejack.com
8-Bit Tannat is available online via Woolworths
Cape Town: Tannin, Culture Wine Bar and Open Wine
JHB: Side Hustle and Whiskey Brother

Marmalade Invader: R215
Wire Frame: R270
Easter Egg: R215
8-Bit Tannat: R302